Running Blind
by helpivefallenandicantgetup
Summary: In which a weapon, an innkeeper, a druid, and a prince/assassin/spy (he's really subpar at that last part) meet up on a fun road trip to escape certain death. Everyone gets betrayed while Arthur is smacked repeatedly in the face by his daddy issues. AU, spy(kinda)/adventure. yay symbolism! Update: i accidentally removed all the swearing oops
1. Implications, Insults, and Intrigue

Implications, Insults, and Intrigue

The carriage lurched over a stone, sending him jolting upright, scowling. He could feel the dull ache foreshadowing the patchwork of bruises that would cover his tailbone by the next day. Settling back again with a quiet groan, Arthur tried once more to get comfortable. He had nearly succeeded when, about five minutes later, another sharp bounce caused him to grit his teeth and give up. He would have much preferred the surging, predictable lope of a horse, even knowing well the aftereffects of a few hours in the saddle. He would have bet his best practice sword that the driver was finding the largest stones and roughest patches just to spite him.

Of course, Arthur was no stranger to concealed spite. As second in the line of succession to the throne of Camelot, he had experienced quite a bit of it in his sixteen years from everyone from conniving old-money nobles thwarted by Uther's strict anti-corruption policies to foolhardy serving boys and girls filled with jealousy of his position and power. Arthur smirked bitterly at that. _Jealousy._ He would be hard-pressed to find anyone jealous of him now.

The carriage rattled along toward the middle of the caravan on the last day of the long, stultifying journey toward Vortigern's kingdom of Essetir. In the uneasy peace following the grueling border war between Essetir and Camelot, Arthur, the spare, had been sent on a "diplomatic mission" to Vortigern's court while his half-sister Morgana, the heiress apparent, remained behind. Arthur held no delusions regarding his new position of ambassador. He was a political hostage, a bargaining chip conceded by his father in order to keep the peace. Uther was not normally one to give away cards, but the recent war had aptly demonstrated Vortigern's capabilities should he choose to mount an all-out invasion. Casualty counts were still coming in, but it was clear by now that while a full offensive would significantly weaken Essetir and make it vulnerable to its not-so-friendly neighbors, the barbarian king would most definitely win. Uther had been forced to make some quick calculations and yield a little space on the dueling floor in order to save face and his kingdom.

By Uther's exacting calculations, that space was occupied by Arthur.

Arthur remembered a legend his old nursemaid had told him once. She had loved imparting the "wisdom of his ancestors," the fierce warriors from far to the north who had come raiding centuries before and left quite a few blonde, blue-eyed eventualities behind. The story had told of the war between the Aesir, the pantheon of high Asgardian gods led by the (not yet) all-seeing Odin, and the Vanir, a newer, powerful race of similar beings from the rather unimaginatively named Vanaheim. As a token of good faith after the conflict and to prevent its resumption, the deities had decided to exchange political hostages. From the Vanir had come Frey, the young, golden god of light and summer and a capable warrior, and his sister Freya, goddess of love. In exchange, the Asgardians had sent Mimir, the ancient god of wisdom, as a trustworthy advisor. However, the Vanir had taken offense at the perceived slight: they had sent their best and brightest and received in exchange a useless, crotchety old blind man. Refusing to be mocked, they had beheaded Mimir. Ultimately, the head was reanimated and the quarrel put to bed, but still Arthur could not help seeing the story as an ominous parallel for his current circumstances. The question was, was he Frey in this version or Mimir?

At around half past noon, the splendidly decorated but not-at-all-well-designed-if-you-

asked-a-certain-someone-but-no-one-was-asking-him-of-course-it-wasn't-like-he-was-the-

bloody- _prince_ -or-anything carriage finally rumbled to a stop, presumably inside the wide courtyard of the massive fortress where he would be staying for the foreseeable future. An official delegation stood in the hot sun, awaiting him. They looked sweaty and uncomfortable in their brocaded robes; Arthur was not inclined to sympathize. The carriage rolled to a stop, a trumpet fanfare cued a footman to open the door, and Arthur steeled himself before plunging into a whirlwind of fake smiles and gaudy attire.

~o8o~

The newly appointed Camelotian ambassador sat in his room, recovering from the long, ceremonious introductions and a few particularly zealous handshakes. The room was nice, maybe fancier than his quarters at home. A four-poster bed sporting an _enormous_ mattress, intricately carved mahogany bed posts, and an impeccably clean velvety canopy sat in the corner, deep red silk sheets almost irresistibly alluring after the long day of officious "welcoming." He spared it a single longing glance before getting up to pace. The walls were dark wood as well, with a carved and painted ceiling that would put Michelangelo to shame if he belonged in the time period. The dressers and chairs were similarly ornate, the latter covered by colorfully embroidered cushions. Adjoining the chamber, the bathroom was just as ostentatious. However, like the display in the courtyard, nothing about the rooms was welcoming. The outrageous wealth and comfort simply served to show off Vortigern's power, intimidating his borderline adversary. Despite the warmth from the cheerily crackling fireplace, the hostility in the air seemed to generate a palpable chill.

Arthur gazed once again at the soft bed before heading out the heavy iron-bound oaken door. He couldn't afford to laze about; just like at home, he had a laundry list of both official and unstated responsibilities. The feast tonight fell into the first category, while any and all gatherings of state after fell into the second. As soon as he stepped out into the hallway, the young royal was greeted by the castle staff member who had been waiting immediately to the right of the door. This was nothing unusual for Arthur, but the shallowness of the bow was new. He would have to get used to it: after all, he wasn't their prince or even a visiting heir apparent. Another thing to get used to was the fact that while at home the servants were trained to turn a blind eye to the activities and eccentricities of royals, here the entire staff would be under orders to watch and report his every move. Arthur revised his earlier assumption that the liveried servant had been standing at attention to the right of the door—the man had probably been listening at the door or even spying through a peephole. Arthur would have to tread _very_ carefully.

Of course, he couldn't blame them. They weren't the only ones keeping their eyes and ears open. But more on that later.

Following the footman, Arthur swept down cramped stone hallways that felt about to press in and crush him, brushing past fabulous tapestries depicting historical scenes (he thought he saw Vortigern inserted in a few) with only brief, imperious glances to hide his nerves. He had gotten the chance to change out of his stained and dirty travelling clothes, but the atmosphere of this place still made him feel small, and his shoulders and neck were perhaps a bit straighter than usual to compensate. His footsteps echoed down the empty corridors, but the servant escorting him moved silently, like a cat. It was unnerving in the extreme. After what seemed like ages, the pair halted in front of a gigantic oaken doorway bound in brass, with ring-shaped knockers twice the size of Arthur's head hanging at rest. The servant thumped the one on the right twice, a fanfare rang out (god, Arthur was beginning to hate trumpets), and the mammoth doors swung open without a sound.

Inside, Vortigern and around fifteen to twenty of his favored lords and ladies sat around a table capable of serving twice their number, resplendent in finery and jewels that winked in the orange light of the fire illuminating the dining hall. Dinner, a small and beautifully presented roast chicken at each place, was already served. The light showed a gigantic room with the ever-present stone walls adorned with art, but it failed to reach the high, vaulted ceiling. The scene was one a prince learned to expect, with the king seated at the long table's head at the opposite end of the hall and his guests arrayed down the sides in order according to rank and favor. Vortigern was by no means a handsome man, but despite the significant girth he had acquired in his advancing age, he retained his dark, close-cropped hair and high cheekbones. His facial features were echoed in his son of the same name, a boy perhaps a few years Arthur's senior who sat glowering at his father's left hand, partially in shadow due to the fire's crackling behind the sovereign. However, the younger Vortigern was lean where his father was fat, wore his hair long and wavy, and shot Arthur glares of suspicion and disdain while the elder boomed out an overly jovial welcome.

After suffering through his official introduction by a crier with a _ridiculous_ accent and a costume that Arthur would laugh at under any other circumstances (and even under these ones he still had to squash a snigger) to a room full of people who either knew who he was already or didn't care, Arthur was ushered to his place of honor at the opposing head of the table, as was only fitting. The sensation that it was _far_ from an honor was exacerbated by the fact that the table's size and guests' placement left him sitting alone, with multiple chairs on either side of the dining table separating him from his nearest neighbor. The "ambassador" could _feel_ the eyes of all assembled on him even when they looked back to their meals, and he was unable to participate in the boisterous conversation unless questions or laughing comments were directed specifically at him. The message was received loud and clear: Vortigern wanted him isolated and insecure.

Well, Arthur was not going to give in to schoolyard tactics, that was for damn sure. He had been tutored and trained for this stuff since birth. And Vortigern could take his "clever" diplomacy and stuff it up his– "My lord, I must thank you for your gracious welcome. And my compliments to your chef, as well." All conversation immediately ceased, and the eyes of the gentry turned on him again. They had not expected him to speak; the distance had been meant to cow him and ensure that he ate quietly at the end of the table, relying on Vortigern throwing him conversational bones to interact with the rest of the hall. His silence would be represented as rudeness, and Vortigern's charity would establish the king's dominance over him. Allowing this would be a grave misstep, so Arthur had instead chosen to speak loudly over all other conversations and directly address the highest royal in the room, establishing himself as an equal. The silence that now descended was intimidating, but Arthur kept his chin high and took a slow, deliberate bite of the chicken leg in his fingers, not breaking eye contact with the aging monarch.

Vortigern, to his credit, did not bat an eye, only narrowing both of his in grudging approbation for the move. He raised his voice as well. "Indeed, your welcome was only as befits a visiting... _son_ of our companion in the crown, Lord Uther Pendragon. We have nothing but respect for your line. And we shall ensure that your compliments are passed on," he added with a dismissive wave in the direction of an unobtrusive door that Arthur assumed led to the kitchens, "especially when we can clearly see how much it is enjoyed." The sovereign waved his fork lazily in Arthur's general direction. "It is nice to view that quaint Camelotian custom within our very own walls."

Arthur's gaze shot quickly over those assembled: all were using knives and forks, and a few ladies were tittering behind their hands. _Damn._ Although he knew full well how to use a knife and fork, in Camelot nobles ate like the common people: with their hands. Now, Vortigern was using his automatic error to politely imply that all Camelotians were savage and backward. If he switched now, it would be showing weakness, giving metaphorical ground. Well, two could play at that game. "Indeed, my father has always impressed upon me that in everyday activities like eating, it is important to imitate the common people we represent. After all, we wouldn't want to be putting on–" he paused and let his eyes roam up and down Vortigern's generous frame to make it _abundantly_ clear what he thought Vortigern was putting on– " _airs,_ now would we?" He smiled politely, folding his hands demurely in his lap.

Vortigerns elder and younger went a bit red in the face, though the trimmer of the two looked down a bit as if he agreed with the visitor but would not admit it. The nobles, who had been whispering behind their hands in response to Vortigern's call-out, went very still. However, Arthur felt his restrained, beatific smile tugging at his cheeks, threatening to widen into a devilish grin, and he lounged back in his chair. _Score one for the ambassador._ Anything Vortigern did to him would not only start an all-out war, but it would also require openly acknowledging Arthur's implication– _showing weakness._ The floored monarch struggled visibly for a response, but he found none and settled for glaring daggers at the young man across from him. Slowly, hesitantly, the discussions resumed, and the guest of honor went quietly back to his chicken leg, position secured for now. The rest of the meal passed without incident other than a few wary glares from Vortigern the younger, and midnight found a weary but self-satisfied teenager being ushered back to his apartments.

Once back "alone" in his rooms, Arthur allowed a smidgen of self-doubt to elbow its way to the forefront of his mind. Had his confidence at the feast been a mistake? Perhaps he should have just played the role Vortigern had been so readily willing to supply him, that of the scared, uncomfortable young political hostage far from home and besieged by enemies on all sides. Perhaps in that persona, his presence would have garnered less attention in the days to come, making it easier for him to attain information….

And information _was_ his end goal. Uther was never one to give too much ground in a sparring match, preferring a brash, offensive style that his son and daughter imitated. The grizzled king may have been forced to provide a hostage, but he had simultaneously embedded a spy.

Of course, Uther already had many spies in Vortigern's lands, at every level from courtiers to scullery maids. The problem was, none of them had been able to get at the information Uther so desperately needed: how Vortigern had done so well in the pseudo-war between them. Essetir was smaller than Camelot, with less fertile farmland and fewer men of soldiering age and fitness, and yet, Vortigern's armies had never seemed to run out of men or tire. Their supplies seemed as limitless as their stamina. Small bands of yeomen sent to secretly scout the enemy's position had never returned. Uther's camps had been stricken with mysterious illnesses smacking of poison as well as improbable animal attacks. In one last, desperate effort, Uther had sent his biggest force yet fresh onto a battlefield; it should have overwhelmed its opponent with ease. However, three days had passed without any communication from his generals, and Uther himself had ridden out to find an enormous silent plain littered with the corpses of his men. Some appeared to have been positively ripped to shreds, while others didn't have a mark on them. There were very few opposition casualties. Through it all, Uther's spies had been disappearing one by one.

Either Vortigern had attained a secret and powerful ally, or sorcery was involved in some way. Perhaps the Druids were no longer so peaceful? The Pendragons would have preferred the former, but neither option seemed good.

And so, the youngest Pendragon was here to find out, a fact which Vortigern probably knew very well but could do next to nothing about. Pretending subservience would have done nothing, Arthur decided, since he would have been watched constantly either way. Vortigern was no fool. Thanks to the political situation, a second-to-Crown Prince had a little leeway to act independently, but not much.

Sinking down onto the end of the mattress, Arthur allowed himself a small moment of self-pity. He missed Morgana; she was much better at this kind of thing than Arthur was, but as the heiress-apparent she obviously couldn't be spared. Still, he would have felt much more confident with her beside him, switching almost instantaneously between cold, imperious royal and warm, caring older sister in that way of hers that he could never understand. He wished Gwen were here; his best friend from childhood was really smart and had always had his back, encouraging him when he needed it and fearlessly questioning him in his more reckless moods. He seldom listened anyway, but he would still appreciate her calming presence, willing ears, and especially her fearlessness and complete lack of deference to him in spite of their difference in station. She was one of the few people with whom, instead of Prince Arthur, he could be simply _Arthur._ With everything going on and all his responsibility here, he needed something or someone to ground him.

Arthur exhaled a deep, full-body sigh and collapsed into the red bed, which suddenly didn't seem quite so hostile. It was almost one a.m.; there would be plenty of time for intrigue in the morning.


	2. Deceit, (a Draining) Discussion, and Dag

Deceit, (a Draining) Discussion, and Daggers

Morning always arrived far too soon for a certain royal who had been called lazy on more than one occasion by a certain someone whose name rhymed with "schmweniveire." Arthur rolled over with a groan and tried to block out the day with a pillow. If he couldn't see it, it couldn't see him. He lay there for a few minutes, and then slowly, the events of the past few months returned to him. Groaning slightly more quietly and dimly debating how to find out who had opened the curtains and execute him or her, Arthur swung his legs out of the almost criminally comfortable bed to greet the day.

The day turned out better than he had hoped. While a royal introduction to court of the importance of his would usually entail a few weeks of fanfares and revelry, Vortigern had apparently decided to curtail this period to six days as part of the ongoing mission to belittle him. If this was the intent, it failed miserably, and Arthur strolled down the hallways toward the courtyard in his second week of residence in Essetir with a spring in his step for the first time in a while. The lack of a schedule of official appearances allowed him time to snoop around a bit. Plus, if he had to listen to one more trumpet, Arthur was going to do something he might regret, though the trumpeter would probably regret it more. In daylight, the fortress was actually quite lovely, with the grey stone of the walls giving way to the light orange of a mineral he didn't recognize at about waist height. The hallways didn't seem quite so claustrophobic as they had in the first week either, although they still echoed loudly as he strode (which, looking back, seemed a bit paradoxical: how could a space be cramped and echoing at the same time? Yet, that was how he had perceived it). Rounding a corner, Arthur came upon a well-maintained garden in the middle of a square of columned, roofed walkways continuous with the castle's passages, presumably placed there to allow finicky royals to enjoy the atmosphere of the garden from the comfort of the shade: god forbid they have to actually be exposed to _sunlight_ to experience the outdoors. Arthur forsook the walkways to wander down the yellowish, sandy path between the patches of vibrant green springing up from the rich earth.

Arthur's smile dimmed. He knew that Essetir had been recovering from a drought, which was why his father had been so caught off guard when Vortigern's armies never seemed to run out of food. This was probably the most fertile soil in the kingdom, and yet Arthur was willing to bet none of the delicacies grown here went to feed Essetir's more needy citizens.

Turning away sharply, the foreign (another thing he would have to get used to: he was the foreigner here) royal headed for the castle's exit, his striding becoming suspiciously like storming. He made it to the main eastern doors unmolested, although the few times he encountered a servant carrying laundry or a gentlewoman out to "take the air," he could feel his or her eyes on his back long after passing.

Arthur was striding very fast now, perhaps faster than was wise if he wanted to appear to be _purposefully walking,_ which was what he was doing, rather than _fleeing,_ which he was most definitely not doing. He slowed as he approached the gates and politely requested that one of the pike-wielding guards open them for him. He was banking on someone so low on the chain of command not knowing him by face.

No such luck.

"Prince Arthur!" the man cried out, flabbergasted. "I mean, your Highness! Wait, I mean, m'Lord! Wait, no–"

"It's unimportant," Arthur cut through smoothly. He was trying to reassure the soldier, who was still stuttering, but his unintentionally cool and imperious tone only seemed to fluster the man further. The guard had curly brown hair (he lacked a helmet) and was surprisingly young, probably in his early twenties, but on Arthur's part, the novelty of intimidating his elders had worn off long ago. Arthur paused to reconsider: maybe instead of trying to calm the soldier down, he should use the other's agitation to his advantage. He put his nose as high in the air as possible without looking ridiculous. "I should like to visit the lower town. The gates?" _Bloody hell,_ it was hard to put on the demanding noble act when the guy had around six inches on him, but Arthur thought he was pulling it off.

"Erm–ah–I mean, there's–that is to say _we've! We have!_ Um…." The bewildered waffling had by this point attracted the other guard, an older man with green eyes and salt-and-pepper hair under his helmet who carried himself with more confidence than his compatriot (although Arthur had to question how anyone could carry himself with confidence while wearing a breastplate and greaves with those _awful_ orange-and-yellow pantaloons).

"Prince Arthur!" the second man exclaimed in a slightly milder tone. "My lord! To what do we owe the pleasure?" He inclined his head briefly, a movement which the first guard followed with so much violence and gusto that he looked like some sort of exotic bird seizing a grub. The older soldier sighed almost imperceptibly and wordlessly excused his red-faced and clearly relieved partner, who almost stumbled and impaled himself on his pike as he backed away with a bit more head-banging. Arthur felt one corner of his mouth twitch, then quickly settle again as he turned to face the more experienced guard before him.

"I was hoping to visit the marketplace in the lower town. Would you be willing to open the gates for me?" Arthur had dropped his act, sensing that this new obstacle would have none of it.

"Ah, unfortunately, I don't have that authority." Translation: _I'm under orders not to open the gate for_ you _specifically._

"I understand, but I am a guest of King Vortigern, so under the circumstances I should think something could be arranged." Translation: Please, _I'm not going to run away and start a war. Do me a favor? It could be profitable for both of us…._

"Well, I'm under orders to at least make sure you are provided with an escort, though I am unable to leave my post to arrange it." Translation: _We're going to have to compromise, and I'm going to have to do something I shouldn't. What's in it for me?_

"I'm sure that if these are your orders, you could not be faulted for carrying them out by acquiring an escort, and it would only be fair to compensate you for the extra labor. Say, five gold sovereigns?" Arthur was beginning to like the man: he was using his wits to get what he wanted while still not _technically_ disobeying orders in a significant way. One didn't get past middle age in the castle guard without a certain _compromise_ mentality.

"That sounds entirely fair, my lord." The salt-and-pepper guard walked off toward the palace, leaving Arthur with the nervous guard, who kept glancing at Arthur when he thought he wasn't looking and _twitching._ It made Arthur very uncomfortable. Eons later, the older soldier returned with a bland-looking man with brown hair, who was introduced somewhat apologetically as George. George bowed his head in the now-expected gesture and murmured formalities in a mild, dry voice that was as forgettable as his features. Arthur supposed that being saddled with a milktoast temporary manservant was acceptable if regrettable, and they exited the sunny courtyard together through the iron gates, George a few polite steps behind.

They were halfway to their destination when Arthur recognized George as the liveried footman who had taken him to dinner on his first night there. This in itself was not unusual, seeing as the heir a-bit-less-than-apparent had never made much of an effort to remember servants (excluding one). However, under the circumstances it was a bit disturbing that he had been shadowed by this exceptionally forgettable man before (probably multiple times since then) and not realized it. Arthur resolved to pay closer attention now that he was the center of it himself.

At around an hour and a half to noon, the pair arrived at the Lower Market, which occupied a bustling courtyard still within the castle's outer walls. The space was filled with Essetis of all classes peddling and buying wares from under colorful but dirt-stained cabanas. Business seemed to be booming despite the recent drought, but while the foreign goods were just as fine as a Camelotian was used to, the vegetables and grain on sale seemed scarce and wilted, and the square, while bustling, did not even approach the hubbub of Camelot's Lower Town on a Sunday. Arthur stopped at a few booths to avoid the suspicion of his escort, braving a swarm of flies to examine a haunch of meat at a cranky butcher's setup and haggling over and actually buying a bolt of deep green cloth from a man with some unusual piercings. Morgana would love it if he got it home to her. _When. When_ he got it home to her.

Finally, Arthur stopped at his true destination: an innocuous knife-sharpener who did not seem to be out-competing the other two who shared his trade at the market. The vendor, a dark-skinned woman who appeared to be around forty, was slightly hunched even when she stood up from her wheel from years of plying her trade, but there was nothing bent or twisted about the cheerful sparkle in her green eyes. Her name was Maggie, but George did not need to know that or to know that _he_ knew that.

"Excuse me, madam, but could I possibly call upon your services? I have a few knives and a sword that got a bit blunted in practice duels on my way here." She turned from where she had been setting aside a now gleaming dagger and blinked, the picture of surprise. Had Arthur not known better, he would have feared he had the wrong vendor: there was no hint of recognition in her eyes.

"Of course, but what is a young lad like you doing practicing with real swords? Dear Lord, what is the world coming to." He began to answer, but she kept on going without a breath, still beaming. "My son Jack would never even be allowed near a real sword, the great big brutish things. He wanted to become a palace guard like his brother, but I said no to _that_ early enough." Arthur decided not to comment on the hypocrisy of her parenting tactics, given her chosen profession (both as her cover and in real life, since he knew that she was possibly more adept with a sword than most of the palace guard).

The heir was so caught up in how convincing her act was that he almost didn't catch it when she abruptly changed topics from her children (who were, in his opinion, little nightmares, but that was neither here nor there; he was totally over that time little Jack had tried to stab him with gardening shears) to the task at hand. "Unfortunately I'm all backed up at the moment, so I probably won't get to your order for a few days. And, good heavens, how many things did you say you needed sharpened? I have so many sharp objects drifting around back here it's a wonder I wasn't impaled _years_ ago!" She gave him a wink at this, which caused him to start a little at the blatant breaking of her cover, but George would probably just interpret it as punctuating her joke. Arthur could tell she was trying not to laugh at his discomfort.

"Ah, yes, I have...um…." He made a show of counting on his fingers and glancing at the sky as he removed seven knives from various locations around his person: his boot, both sleeves, his waist, the back of his collar, and one particularly clever one disguised as ornamentation on his belt. George did not react other than to give him a blink-and-you-miss-it sidelong glance. " _Bloody_ … I must have lost one. It should be eight. And the sword, of course; the sword took the worst of it."

Maggie pursed her lips at the weapons now occupying the low table in front of her booth. "Yeesh, that's a large order. Let me see, we'll have you fill out an order form," she began, pulling a piece of cheap parchment out of a locked box to her left, "and I'll make sure to have everything done by three weeks from now, so you can come back down to pick it all up then. Make sure to describe the specifics of each knife on there: my youngest, Janie, likes to come in here and switch 'em around sometimes!" She threw back her head and cackled, and a few neighboring store owners gave her fond smiles. Maggie Einarsdottir, groomed to spy for Uther since childhood, was in deep.

Arthur took the parchment and an offered quill and bent to the table to scratch out his order. _Centurion sword, engraved with lion. 3 daggers, blue steel with leather-wrapped grips. Scimitar blade, diminished size. 2 long-bladed knives with 3 ridges on grips. Aradonian penknife._ When he was done, Maggie took both items back and placed them in the lockbox, still gabbing away. By the time the teen had escaped her small talk and visited one more stall to deflect suspicion, the sun was directly overhead: high noon.

In around a week and a half, Uther would receive the "order form" and interpret the message based on a prearranged code. _Contact established. The amount of time for this message to reach Camelot and return is three weeks. Don't send response by river route since there are guards along the canal._ The description of the scimitar, a curved blade considered dishonest by many fighters, signaled how closely Arthur was being spied upon. _Observance present but minor._ The number 2 signified _both Vortigern and son are in residence_ in case an assassination or two proved advantageous, and the number 3 simply meant _no news._ The final item was his signature, _Arthur Pendragon._ Arthur thought it was too simple, but Uther insisted that people tended to miss what was right before their eyes, and his son had not questioned further.

For now, Arthur had just crossed the first item, "establish contact," off of his to-do list. It was tempting to stop there for today, but there was still too much daytime left, and he was feeling productive. He and his forgettable shadow made the short walk back to the castle in silence.

~o8o~

Back inside the fortress, Arthur skulked around a bit, but there was really nothing he could do. This was the disadvantage of spying as a political hostage as opposed to, say, a scullery maid: he couldn't overtly seek out intelligence without potentially tearing apart relations already incredibly tenuous and frayed, and everyone around him was actively hiding any information of value. He hadn't uncovered anything in a week and was starting to feel useless.

He was saved from his semi-devious ambling by a summons from Vortigern's chief-of-staff, delivered by one of those messengers in the floppy hats. This tactic, at least, was incredibly insulting. Princes summoned chiefs-of-staff, not the other way around, but Arthur bit down his pride and followed the pantaloons. At least he was more likely to learn something from this meeting than from wandering aimlessly and hoping to just _happen_ to follow the right person or eavesdrop on the right conversation on an enormous, multileveled estate. However, Arthur was still not looking forward to the discussion, seeing as it most likely pertained to his attempted unsupervised and uncondoned field trip.

Vortigern's head of the household was an older man who seemed perpetually in motion, straightening things or pacing in small steps, a tendency which Arthur would later theorize stemmed from the man's constant need to reaffirm his own indispensability. It was exhausting to hold a conversation with him. "Milord, His Highness King Vortigern (long may his righteous reign endure) has requested that I, his humble and subservient servant, speak, communicate, and hold congress with your royal self regarding your dwelling in this...dwelling." He shifted and cleared his throat importantly, cover the look of vague discomfort that flashed across his face. "Since it has come to my attention and I have been made aware that you ventured to the Lower Town this morning, not two hours past, His Royal and Regal Highness has informed me of the necessity of–" here he took a brief pause for breath and to straighten a nearby tapestry on the wall– "discouraging your egress or departure from these castle grounds without accompaniment." There was a brief cessation of motion and speech, and Arthur's reply was on the tip of his tongue when the man, seemingly nervous at a moment lacking the soothing tones of his own voice, inhaled sharply and continued. "Of course, surely and undoubtedly milord understands that out of respect for your illustrious father His Majesty's foremost concern (and of course mine as his loyal attendant) is for your safety and security. As such, I would dare to humbly request of milord that an escort accompany you to areas where dangerous riffraff" (he added a sniff at this) "has been known to dwell, most notably the cells and the Lower Town."

Arthur, accustomed since childhood to sitting through hours-long speeches from humorless dignitaries, was feeling a bit woozy by the end of the older man's breathless spew of words. However, he was able to catch one useful piece of intelligence amidst the slurry of unnecessary synonyms and jargon. Vortigern didn't want him near the dungeon cells alone. The rules about leaving the castle were expected, but this was something new. The chief-of-staff, despite his false humility, was obviously used to being obeyed without question by the household's labor force, so he wouldn't expect that anywhere he specifically discouraged Arthur from going would be exactly where he wanted to go.

Arthur excused himself, keeping his answer as brief as possible while still being polite. Luckily, he had ditched George to answer this summons. It was time for a visit to the dungeons.

~o8o~

As night fell, Arthur skirted the main byways of the castle, using little-used passageways he had just discovered (not that he had gotten _lost,_ of course. That was too ridiculous to even consider; unplanned but useful reconnaissance was a much more apt name for how he had spent his last few hours). He slowed only to snatch a slightly dirty cloak with a large hood to hide his face from outside the kitchens: it was a common enough item to go unregistered around the castle, since the servants' quarters and hallways were not prioritized in heating the fortress, and if he was caught it was clean enough that he could claim it was some sort of Camelotian haute couture.

Arthur was disappointed in himself for not thinking to snoop in the dungeons on his own. They would certainly hold individuals unsympathetic to Vortigern's reign. Perhaps some of the prisoners were even there because they knew too much. While executions of these seemed more likely with his knowledge of Vortigern's internal policy, he might find prisoners of conscience with extenuating circumstances or even someone awaiting execution the next day. In any case, the gloomy vaults were more likely to yield results than waiting to stop being ignored, and Arthur, despite his station, had always been one to take crazy risks rather than loiter in safety.

Arriving at the ominously steep staircase downward, Arthur paused to take a calming breath. He fumbled in his coat pocket for the tools he had gathered while los– _investigating._ The leather ball's weight was reassuring in his hand, but even more comforting was the feeling of his fingers sliding smoothly into the four thick rings in the hilt of his blue steel knuckle-knife, the one he'd elected at the last minute to keep to himself at Maggie's. Fingers clenched comfortably over the knife's grip, the slightly pale royal stalked silently down the stone steps into darkness.

A few stairs from the bottom he paused, pressing himself against the rightmost wall and sneaking a cautious look at the broad landing below. The staircase represented the northern exit, with two more passages leading out from dark open archways and one closed and locked door on the room's southern side, opposite the stairway. Flickering firelight gave away the position of the six guards drinking and playing dice games at a small table next to a torch in a wall sconce, laughing and cheering raucously with each cast. Their post was against the northern wall, between the staircase and the western exit on Arthur's right. Arthur paused and reconsidered one of his assessments. _Six_ guards? Even with valuable prisoners of war, Camelot's prison never employed more than four or so, and usually only two were posted. Arthur shook off the thought as unimportant for now: it would not affect his plan. The plan was deceptively simple, as his father had taught him most good ones were. This was the precarious part. Arthur switched his knife to his left hand and palmed the leather ball, a child's toy. He had practiced this trick as a child with Gwen, each trying to impress the other with his or her skill and strength first with a wooden hoop and then with a ball. Now, he called upon his muscle memory and resolved to thank Gwen for showing this to him if he ever got home. _When._ He had been realizing over the past few days alone that he would have to thank her for a lot of things. That rankled.

Drawing back his hand, palm facing down, Arthur launched the ball about ten feet into the wide room, jerking his hand in an odd motion as he released to put as much backspin on it as he could. The guards did not register as it flew silently into the room, but they took notice when it struck the stone floors loudly and began bouncing back in the direction of the darkened staircase, where a certain royal had retreated back into his hiding place, huddling against the bare wall and pulling his dark cloak over his face. Sure enough, after a moment of bleary-eyed confusion four of the soldiers disappeared at a run through the dark _western_ corridor, from which it appeared that the flying object had emerged. Two chased the ball across the room toward the east wall. They picked it up and stared at it in bewilderment.

"Wot is it?" the first asked in a low, rumbling voice with a distinct lower-class accent.

"It's...a toy?" answered the other, her dark hair whipping around her face as she shook her head in confusion. She held it at arm's length and squashed it, muscles tense, then hesitantly brought it closer to herself and sniffed it. "Um...wot should we do? We need t' report this? Suspicious, but it en't much of a threat." Arthur smiled, unseen in the darkness.

"Well, I mean, I think we hafta. 'Specially with…." he trailed off, eyes darting to the southern door with an almost imperceptible shudder. "Do you want t' do it? Boss'll be asleep."

"No, you been at this longer than me, partner. Maybe he won' be as mad at _you_ if it turns out to be nothing."

The rumbly-voiced guard grunted reluctantly. "'Aight, but if he has my head it's on yours." He shouldered his partner affectionately, and she jogged down the west corridor to join the other four guards as he started up the stairs.

This was when the lurking shadow chose to strike. He lunged forward, strong fingers pressing over the man's mouth as he tackled him, and they rolled down the stairs. Arthur's voluminous cloak did a little to muffle the _clank_ of armor hitting the floor, but he would still have to act fast to avoid detection. Arthur managed to end up on top, knife to the guard's throat, but his ribs felt more than a little bruised from the heavier and better-armored man rolling over him. The soldier in question's eyes were wide, brown staring in shock at blue. Lifting his fist and angling the knife away, Arthur smashed his metal-reinforced knuckles into the man's head again and again. On the third hit, the brown eyes rolled back in their sockets. On the seventh, the guard was well and truly unconscious. Arthur delivered one more blow to ensure that his victim was down for the count. He hoped the guy would survive, but it wasn't too high on his list of priorities. He was trained to be a warrior, general of his sister's armies. He had killed strangers for Camelot before, and he would kill again.

As he dragged the deadweight through the dark east arch and concealed it behind some stacked shields (this appeared to be an armory), the teen grinned at his luck. He had been correct in that Esseti guards followed similar protocols to those at home, staying in pairs at the minimum and splitting up to identify threats. He had actually thought he would have to take out _two_ guards instead of one, but fear of the man upstairs had saved him some trouble. Arthur ran lightly back out to the guards' table and grabbed a heavy iron key off its peg. Plain old laziness and absent-mindedness had worked in his favor as well: no-one had grabbed the keys in the rush out. He sprinted to the one locked door, inserted the key in the lock, and twisted it to the sound of a satisfying _clink._

The door swung open silently, a yawning mouth ready to swallow him whole. Arthur returned the keys to their original position, then ran back and through the portal. As he silently swung the door closed, he heard muffled voices drifting in.

"Where'd it come from?"

"Chamber was empty. Must've been some idiot servant kids fooling around too close. God knows it en't the first time it's 'appened. Maybe someone lost a bet, just like Dennis here. Pay up, mate!"

"Aw, wot'r you on about? Those dice were _clearly_ loaded. Think you can get yer tricks past me? Dennis don't miss a thing, _mate._ "

The ensuing sounds of a scuffle ensured that quiet footsteps went undetected as a tall, sturdy frame disappeared into the impenetrable gloom.


	3. Fear (n) from Old English Faer

_Fear_ (n.) from Old English _Fær_

Arthur warily stopped to let his eyes get used to the darkness. It was not as pitch-black in the prison as he had originally thought. The slow regaining of sight, however, did nothing to assuage his uneasiness. Something was wrong. Something was _missing._

He almost facepalmed when he got it. Of course something was missing: the _prisoners._

There was complete silence in the vast, dingy room. It was cold enough that the young royal could now just barely see his breath escape him in a fine mist like a dragon's flame. The dungeon was modest-sized, with about fifteen six-by-ten cells including both those sunk into the walls and cage-like structures that occupied most of the floor space. It was entirely contained in the one big room with a ceiling that started about three handbreadths above the cage roofs, which also surprised him: at home, the prison was a system of long hallways lined with cells. It was a smarter design, since it meant escaping prisoners or attackers could be easily trapped by the Lionguard, Camelot's most prestigious military-slash-police unit, in spaces with little maneuverability and no options. Like the large antechamber outside, it again didn't appear that the Esseti castle was very well planned out. How had Vortigern ever managed to trounce his father if he couldn't even build an effective fortress?

Trying to avoid the shivers sent down his spine by the creepy atmosphere of the still, silent cages, Arthur began to move slowly and silently through the room, mind whirling. Where had the convicts gone? Given his studies of the recent drought conditions, Vortigern Senior's lackluster and often counterproductive nudges toward economic recovery, and the brutality of Vortigern's military forces keeping "order" throughout the land, Arthur doubted there was simply a lack of crime. Had they all been executed? How many? Or had they been moved: was this a trap to catch Uther's son out and restart the war?

The last thought drained the remainder of the heat from his body, leaving him shivering and breathless. Not only did Arthur very much not wish to die, but he also dreaded his people, who he had been raised to protect, being hurt because of him. It was this ever-present fear that made him glad Morgana was the heiress apparent, not him.

With effort, Arthur schooled his thoughts. His whirlpool of paranoia wouldn't help anyone. What was there to do here if there were no prisoners? Had all this effort and the possible death of the guard been for nothing?

No, that couldn't be right. There wouldn't be _six guards_ posted to watch over an empty room. If it was a trap, Vortigern would have made it easy for him and left only one or two. Finally, the fact that he could see while ten feet underground meant that there was a fire somewhere, and fuel was expensive. Even with a king's coffers, it wasn't something that could be wasted on an empty, dingy room. With one last nervous glance around the darkened room, he followed the source of the light.

This led him into another identical room, the entrance to which had been hidden by the floor cages, and then another. By the time he reached the third room, the flickering firelight was much brighter, reflecting off of swirls of what looked like iron ore in the stone walls. Arthur could just make out a torch at about face height on the wall in one of the far corners. Ignoring the eerie atmosphere, he advanced slowly but surely, moving on the balls of his feet like a cat so that his footsteps made no sound on the cold stone floors.

Against the bars of the free-standing cage in the right corner, farthest from the entrance, sat a hunched figure. Its knees were drawn up to its chest, arms clasped loosely around them. Its clothes, a greenish tunic and long brown pants, were not rags, but they were worn at the seams and looked to be of thin material, entirely unsuited for the freezing cold. All Arthur could make out of its features was a mop of black hair and large ears that stuck out a bit to the sides.

Something felt... _wrong_ about this, but Arthur hadn't come all this way to be scared off like a timid housemaid by a _bad feeling._ Steeling his nerves, he initiated, "Hello?"

His voice echoed around the room. The figure in the cage did not move, and Arthur realized it was either asleep or pretending to be.

He tried again, louder. "Hello? You there. Madam? Sir?" He couldn't tell from what little he could see: the hair was short, but the legs were stick-skinny.

The figure stirred but did not lift its head. "The second one."

Arthur almost jumped: he hadn't really been expecting a response so soon. The voice was male and a bit raspy but otherwise pleasant, with an Esseti country accent from what he could tell from the short exchange. It spoke a little louder than necessary. It sounded very tired.

Arthur honestly wasn't sure where to go from here. "Why were you imprisoned" seemed a bit forward. Luckily, the prisoner took the choice out of his hands. "So who are you, and what do you want? I'm guessing you didn't come all the way down here for small talk." Now that the boy (man?) had spoken more, Arthur could detect a hint of something else in the accent that he couldn't place. The boy (Arthur decided no man could be that skinny) seemed to hold his s's and bite out his hard consonants, like the c in _come,_ and at the same time his vowels had a slight lilt to themthat Arthur couldn't connect with any foreign dignitary who had visited his father's court. Maybe it was just an odd individual speech pattern.

Arthur felt it wise not to give too much away. "An interested party, looking for a way to undermine a certain monarch. I'm guessing you hold no love for Vortigern."

The figure finally raised its head. "Gee, you think?" Arthur's breath caught in his throat.

The boy had no eyes. It wasn't that he had the milky white eyes of a blind beggar or even red gouges under his lids; he _literally_ had none of the structures of an eye: no lids, no lashes, nothing. Instead, his face from the tops of his cheekbones to just under his eyebrows was a mess of scar tissue, with oozing red or yellow areas and angry pink parts where it had not fully healed, even if the brown, scabby parts indicated that it was an old injury. It looked like an artist had painted him, then smudged a finger violently in a line across his face, smearing the paint in angry, messy lines. Arthur, who had seen plenty of battle wounds, thought he might be sick.

Yes, he actually would be sick. Arthur turned to the side and dry heaved, but he managed to keep down his lunch. When he turned back, the boy's hair had fallen over his face somewhat, making it easier to regard him more.

The blind boy looked to be around his age and was deathly pale. Odd, dark brown lines about an inch thick started in the centers of his sharp cheekbones where the scarring stopped, dropped down both cheeks like tear trails, and then wound back, following the contours of his face, to curve around his jaw just below the ears and trace his jugular veins down his neck before they turned sharply on his collarbones to meet at the base of his throat in a wide, curved _v_ shape like a diving gull. Arthur couldn't quite tell from here, but it looked like they branched off at the jugulars and also continued around the back of the neck.

Arthur was shaken from his thoughts by a sardonic voice. "Done staring? You're still there, right?"

Arthur collected himself. All in all, it wasn't actually the worst disfigurement he had ever seen; it had just taken him by surprise, especially with the eerie sense of _other_ -ness worst in this room. "Uh, still here. What's–what's your name?"

Unexpectedly, the boy in the cage's mouth broke into a dazzling grin. "Wait, really?" In one fluid motion he leapt to his feet. "Merlin. I'm–my name is Merlin." He walked to the side of the cage closest to Arthur and put his hand forward, although not through the bars, a few feet to Arthur's left.

Arthur stared at it for a moment before realizing it was outstretched for a handshake. Tentatively, he reached in and shook it, managing not to recoil in surprise when he felt an odd grip and realized the boy was missing his pinky finger above the first knuckle. Arthur had seen many with digits and even limbs stolen by frostbite. This was not frostbite.

After the handshake was broken, Arthur stepped back a few paces, and an awkward silence descended. Merlin's almost puppy-like eagerness slowly receded with his smile. Arthur finally broke the silence. "So...about why I'm here."

The sightless boy nodded seriously, facing a couple of inches to Arthur's right. "You said you were an enemy of Vortigern?"

Arthur winced at his elevated volume. He knew the door was closed, but the dungeons echoed like everywhere else in this bloody castle, and if someone _did_ decide to come down here…. "Could you keep it down? I don't want to be caught here!"

Merlin winced, the muscles of his jaw visibly tightening, and stage-whispered, "Sorry. Sometimes they come down here with...they throw off my hearing. So I don't get too perceptive." His facial muscles scrunched up a little, and the other boy saw one hand twitch.

Yikes. Arthur adopted the medium volume he used to talk to his half-deaf former nurse. "Yes, I'm an enemy of Vortigern. I'm looking for information on his military capabilities. There's something going on, something...unnatural," the royal fished.

To his delight, Merlin visibly tensed and backed slightly away from the bars. So it _was_ magic! That had been his and his father's preferred theory. And this mysterious prisoner definitely knew something.

Up close, Arthur could see that the dark brown lines on the young man's face were not actually solid lines, but smaller tattooed, primitive-looking line symbols, most including sharp angles and dots, interlocking and arranged in lines. Arthur was not stupid. A picture began to form in his mind, one he did not like, and he took another step away from the bars. "Would you happen to know anything about that, Merlin?"

The other boy was almost back to the other end of the cell now. "...Maybe I do. But, of course, you can't expect me to trust you just like that. I've given you my name. Won't you give me yours?"

This request set all of the alarm bells that had been ringing in Arthur's head since he had first seen the six guards into a frenzy. Names had power. And besides, even if he was wrong, it would be a disaster if Merlin told a jailer he had been visited by someone named Arthur asking for information to hurt Vortigern. However, if he wanted information, he had to give the other boy something. He thought fast. "Name's Victor."

The other boy's head tilted to the side. "You're lying."

The eyeless face snapped toward him abnormally fast. Arthur forgot to breathe. The eerie feeling of _other_ -ness that had been making him, against all logic, want to run since he'd first entered the room had dissipated upon Merlin's first smile, but now it returned in tidal waves that twisted Arthur's stomach and left him gasping for air. He needed to get out _now._ He had to get out get out getoutgetoutgetoutgetoutget _outGET OUT–_

These weren't his thoughts. Ignoring his instincts screamingat him, Arthur grunted and painfully straightened up from where he hadn't even realized he'd twisted over his stomach to glare at the _thing_ in the cage. "Merlin" was pacing back and forth, practically growling his words. Arthur caught the tail end of a sentence and realized the thing with the appearance of a boy had been talking the entire time since the tsunamis of panic had hit. "–some poor schmuck who's new to the guard, aren't you? They bully you into this? Or maybe you're just like them. Probably. I suppose you were going to offer to let me out? Got to hand it to you, your premise was a bit more creative than the last one. But you can't fool me, not anymore. Keep talking. I could _end_ you, you know. Why don't you come through this door, tough guy? Let's see just how strong you are against a _little blind boy._ They here too? _Cenred! Isobel! Rufus!_ I know your names now. You know what I can do with your names…"

Arthur turned and started to slowly walk away as the thing in the cage kept rambling, alternating between a rage-filled growl and an eerie singsong that set the hairs on the back of Arthur's neck on end. He would _not_ show that the thing was affecting him. He was stronger than that. His stomach clenched again, painfully, and the urge to run threatened to overwhelm him, but he continued his stately saunter. The thing in the cage behind him–and it killed him to turn his back–was still pacing, dragging a chain behind it over the stone floor from a manacle attached to its ankle. Iron. The creature hadn't been able to put a hand through the bars of cold iron. But Arthur had. Arthur had _touched it_. He wanted to throw up. Not only was he absolutely positive Merlin was magical and _very dangerous,_ but he was reasonably sure the "boy" had been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of his father's men. He had seen some of the bodies. Many had been unrecognizable as human.

Over the sorcerer's echoing shouts and his own thoughts as he tried desperately to control himself, Arthur almost missed the sound of a door clanking open, yells of surprise and anger, and the thud of running feet. The guards must have heard the commotion. Arthur ducked behind a cage into a dark corner against the wall to let them pass, again pulling up his dark cloak. Honestly, this was a lucky break: his original exit plan had been to count on the element of surprise and simply run past them, depending on their heavy armor and his athleticism to keep him in the lead until he could give them the slip, but now he could simply walk out while the guards were distracted. The sorcerer had done him a favor! He clung to this thought to try to steady his panicked breathing and racing heartbeat. He tried to laugh to drown out the fear, but it came out as a low croak. The guards raced past without a second glance, some markedly more reluctant than others. Only now did Arthur allow himself to sprint, telling himself it was to avoid the guards and not because of the thing in the cell behind him, which had gone silent. The fear spiked painfully, then began to ebb. Arthur sprinted out of the dungeons like the hounds of Hell were on his trail.


	4. Ticks, Drips, and Ounces

Ticks, Drips, and Ounces

In the pitiless, objective light of day, Arthur cringed when reflecting back on his graceless escape from the prison. However, at least the first part of his mission had been easy and incredibly quick, given the circumstances. As he was constantly reminding his father (usually under his breath while the latter's back was turned), more often than not the big risks paid off. He was barely a week into his stay-slash-polite incarceration, and he already knew what was going on. Now he just had to figure out what the hell he should do about it.

The code he had established with his father had a few problems. The first was that messages could not be sent frequently without arousing suspicion. He would also have to find ways to use all of his knives as much as possible in public places in order to make them blunt again. The people of Essetir would probably think he was a bit weird, but he wasn't here to make friends. Finally, what the sender could say was limited to a short series of prearranged reports; he could not elaborate beyond without getting _very_ creative with the knife symbolism and risking confusing the receiver. Luckily, what he had discovered as the cause was one of the first things Uther had thought of: magic. Descriptions of a single-ridged knife handle (one for magic, two for an ally, and three for no news as already used) and the chain-design filigree dagger instead of the flame-patterned one (Vortigern had captured a sorcerer, not found some sort of artifact or discipline to let him or a hireling perform unnatural feats) would get the point across. Uther's reply with instructions on proceeding could afford to be more eloquent since it would be scripted, encoded, on the back of the "receipt" in invisible ink.

Arthur would rub Gwen's face in this when he got home. Of course it was magic; what else would it be? She had been teasing him for inheriting the "Pendragon paranormal paranoia" for years.

 _The boy tears down to the courtyard without a backward glance. He's escaped his tutors again, but he can practically hear the rustle of their monochromatic robes and omnipresent stacks of parchment as they come pounding after him. Facts and figures and game theory and_ manners– _ugh. It makes his head spin. He couldn't stay in that dusty, airless room any longer, even knowing he'll now have to watch his father glower at him in that way that makes him want to shrink back into his shell like a snail encountering a spike of rusty metal. His father always glares at him in an almost bemused way, as if he's shocked and enraged that his son would dare to attempt to make off with one troy ounce of his attention._

 _But it looks like the boy has gotten away for now. He's always been a fast runner. Now the time stretches out before him like a banquet table. So much unscheduled_ potential. _What will he try first? There are just so many_ smells _here!_

 _He notices a girl glaring heatedly at him from next to the staircase he just clattered down. She pointedly does not break eye contact as she bends down to pick up the scattered clothing articles he knocked to the ground in his mad dash for freedom. She's pretty, about his age with smooth, dark skin and wild hair made more disheveled by his explosive entrance. He thinks he recognizes her from the castle halls. She maintains her steady, belligerent gaze as she snags another clean tunic up out of the dirt, and his good breeding hijacks his brainwaves._

 _"Sorry," he mumbles as he bends to pick up a soiled corset with tangled laces. He knows he must not mumble, but she's kind of scary. Her glare is a little reminiscent of his big sister's: she's not scared of_ him _at all. He scrunches that thought into a tiny, damp, wadded-up ball and tosses it into the back of his brain. The boy does not get scared._

 _She seems slightly mollified by his gesture, which makes him a little bolder. He hands her a woolen sock with a hole in the toe. It's purple. Hm. Royalty, then. "Hey, I'm Pr–...Arthur!" he chirps._

 _The glare loses a little more of its paralyzing power. "I know. I'm Gwen."_

 _Working together, the two finish the cleanup pretty quickly. The boy casts around for a topic of conversation, but years of conditioning on how to make small and not-so-small-as-it-_

 _appears talk seem to have deserted him. He goes with his gut. "Hey, wanna race?"_

 _The last of the glare fizzles out, and she beams at him. "Yeah!"_

 _The laundry basket is forgotten on the bottom step as they dash across the courtyard, giggling uncontrollably. They shoulder aside smaller people and dodge or duck the rest (pretty much everyone) as they chase each other pell-mell down the narrow, angled alleys of the Upper Town. It's late afternoon on that kind of day where the sunlight seems to have filtered through a bell jar of orangey glass over the city, filling the air with an amber glow and comfortable shadows. The air seems to buzz with a low pitch like that of a bee drunk on honey. The boy thinks he smells orange blossoms, but there are none in the hanging wire flower bins that line the creamy, light beige stone walls._

 _But Gwen is pulling ahead! He can't lose to a_ girl! _He tries to pump his little legs faster, but she has a slight height advantage and knows the high-walled alley maze better. When he circles back into the courtyard, puffing out lazy afternoon air, she is already sitting on the steps and disguising her own panting behind a smug grin._

 _He is indignant and infuriated. "There's!" Puff. "No way!" Wheeze._ "Sorcery!"

 _The last accusation was a little loud, but not anywhere close to a shout. The semi-crowded square goes quiet. People are staring at Arthur more than usual, and more warily, too. The courtyard quietly empties in the space of a half a minute, and time seems to slide past with the speed of a spoonful of honey oozing into the cracks between tiles or cobblestones. Neither child understands the gravity of what is happening as they stand in the center of an empty square filled wall to wall to shuttered window with echoing silence._

 _Now the moments are like snapshots that drip rather than ooze._

 _Gwen puts a defiant hand on the hip of her stained blue-and-brown dress._ Drip.

 _A window behind him is shuttered with a clatter._ Drip.

 _On the other end of an alley, out of the corner of his eye, he glimpses a twitch of red fabric._ Drip. Drip. Drip.

 _Then Gwen starts cackling, and time resumes its normal pace. "You're just sore because you_ lost!" _Arthur can't help laughing with her, a little abashed and flushed bright maroon not just from the chase because he recognizes that it's true. He wasn't really serious; this lively serving girl being a magician would be a little ridiculous, wouldn't it? She's a little scary, but not like_ that. _The twitching red cape-end does not reappear._

 _Arthur's tutors arrive to drag him back to cough over dusty old manuscripts insulated from the drowsy afternoon air. But he's made a friend, so it's been a good day, hasn't it?_

He missed Gwen.

~o8o~

Weeks passed, weeks of dodging George the bland, beige shadow, of his eyes avoiding the staircase to the dungeons when he happened to pass by, of blunting his daggers on wooden targets on the practice field (and he could never resist giving brash, evil little grins to Vortigern's knights who jumped when a long blade _thunked_ deep into the center), of deceptively cordial exchanges with Vortigern like tossing back and forth a hot potato studded with poisoned spines. Finally, he sent his message. Maggie was a boisterous and chatty as ever, with even more meaningful looks and double-sided comments that left him spluttering and glancing over his shoulder. Three more weeks passed. Then another. He became casual friends with the assistant chef, a weedy-looking boy who really knew his way around a ragout. This time, he kept up with his sword training but stored his remaining knives sharp.

The reply arrived exactly four weeks, three days, and six hours after Maggie sent off his report. He was still basking in the warm internal glow from delivering a particularly lethal barb at dinner the night before ("Oh, the Queen? I don't believe I've had the pleasure. Funny, I thought I had met all the ladies who are friends of my lord. Perhaps I never introduced myself because I saw you by my lord's side and mistook you for the virtuous Lady Cachonda. An inadmissible error; I humbly apologize." Arthur hadn't known a person could turn that shade of purple). The satisfaction was sucked away immediately when Maggie handed him the "receipt," and in the abrupt new vacuum he almost dropped one of the proffered knives. It took every ounce of his self-control to master his facial expressions and respond naturally to the other spy's smiling wave as she turned to banter with the next customer.

Alone in his room, by the trembling light of a single candle, he read.

 _"Lions in Hunter's Wood. On September harvest moon night bring to camp. Alive if possible (C. forces diminished). Earn trust: use it instead. –U. P._

Then, as an afterthought but still unquestionably written there in the bold, unslanted, slightly boxy script: _"Good work."_


	5. Best-Laid Plans

Best-Laid Plans

Getting back into the dungeon was not as hard as anticipated. The knocked-out guard had survived his "bump on the head" but been fired: his corporal really had been grumpy to be woken up. He had been convinced the unlucky employee had been drunk, tried to sneak out of his shift in the chaos, and hit his head on a shield stumbling through the armory (the assumption had been supported by the _copious_ amounts of alcohol found hurriedly stashed under the dice table). Were all guards this stupid? Arthur hoped not for Camelot's sake.

(And if a dark part of his mind whispered that, with the way he'd felt that night all the way back to his rooms, it wasn't entirely impossible that the insidious tendrils of mind-bending magic from the thing reached all the way to the guard station, all the way to the castle walls, even _beyond..._ well, Arthur wasn't in a habit of paying attention to the darker corners of his mind, anyway.)

One... _clever_ ruse involving a goose and some marmalade later (and Arthur would never recount where he obtained either one or what happened afterward beyond those details), Arthur slunk back into the dungeon with extreme reluctance. This plan was stupid. How the hell was he supposed to get an _imprisoned sorcerer_ to trust him? He had trouble with regular people on a good day, and that was when he had something to offer. Since he couldn't give away his identity, he really had nothing to give the thing.

Well, except the obvious, but that would be short-lived, and the creature would have no reason to believe him anyway.

Then again, it didn't have a choice, did it? And the obvious solution was usually the best, according to his scheming sister. She had imparted that piece of advice with a hair flip and a slow smile that had given him chills. Arthur tried not to think about how both of the women in his life scared him so much.

As he entered the gloomy space, Arthur became aware of a niggling sensation of discomfort and...what was that feeling? Guilt. That was it. But what did Arthur have to feel guilty about? He had done nothing wrong.

He stopped short as he passed the first archway. This wasn't _his_ guilt. The sorcerer was _making_ him feel this way, just like it had made him afraid the other night. Why would it want him to feel guilty? What was its game?

Grinding his teeth and pushing down the intensifying twist in the pit of his stomach, Arthur pushed on into the torchlit chamber. He started to feel a little light-headed, losing a bit of his fighter's grace as he walked. The bars of standing cages looked like threads of spider silk hanging down from the ceiling in the stagnant, heavy air of the place. Against the far wall, just as before, was a hunched figure.

It looked up, and Arthur felt a spike of terror, a distant echo of that panic from before. The sorcerer got to its feet with a jerky stumble. Arthur noticed that it had more heavy gray chains than before, dragging from both ankles and pinioning its wrists together, making it difficult for the thing to rise.

"Who's there?" it inquired with an audible voice crack.

Arthur licked his lips. "A–Victor."

The gut-twisting guilt subsided a bit. "Oh! I thought I'd scared you off the other day. Night? Whichever. Sorry about that, by the way. Some of the guards like to...mess with me, and I got a bit worked up. Based on their reaction, I get that you aren't one of them now." It smiled wryly. "I was hoping you would come back to talk!"

Arthur paused. So _it_ felt guilty. If that was possible. Were all the emotions its own, projected? Was the fear from the other night...well, it didn't really matter how it worked. What mattered was what Uther could do with it.

The sorcerer had its head cocked to the side like a bird's. Arthur realized it was waiting for a response. The stance set his teeth on edge: now that he knew what he knew, Arthur couldn't miss all the small signs of inhumanity. Lashing out in reckless (and consciously self-defeating, but Arthur had a visceral reaction to being made uncomfortable or put on the defensive) spite, he ground out, "I don't _chat_ with sorcerers."

The boy in the cage frowned. "Well, maybe _I_ don't chat with arrogant _prats."_

Arthur snorted.

Wait, _what?_ This was not an even remotely funny situation! He was talking to a mass-murdering _creature,_ and yet the retort was so unexpected in this place that it had surprised a half-laugh out of him. It sounded like something Gwen would say. He missed Gwen.

Annoyed at his own weakness, Arthur bulldozed onward. "Like you have a choice. I'm here to make an offer, and you will listen. I can get you out of here."

Immediately, those foreign, invasive emotions bubbled again under Arthur's ribs and in the base of his throat. This time there was not one overwhelming, frenzied feeling but a confusing, eddying whirlpool of many, only a few of which he caught. A dove's flutter of doubtfulness rippled over the barely-noticed blunted obsidian knife of dulled despair. Most powerful of all was a concentrated burning sensation blossoming behind the base of his throat.

The thing in the cage licked its lips. "Well, it's not like I'm going to be fielding any better offers. What's the plan?"

~o8o~

September's harvest moon was fast approaching, so Arthur spent the next two weeks making preparations. There were supplies to gather. He made sure to get all of his knives and the sword back from Maggie, and he acquired a potent herb via her to put the captain of the guard to sleep in case one of those posted outside of the cells managed to escape and make it to his superior for help. Arthur doubted this would happen, but one must prepare for all eventualities. He strolled down endless echoing, torch-lined passageways (which were back to feeling narrow and in danger of imminent collapse), this time knowing exactly where he was, to plot an exit route through the less-used passageways. He wrote notes to memorize various officials' schedules and then burned the notes once they were memorized (which was cathartic as well as cautious). He bribed the right people. Everything was going smoothly. With three days to go, everything was in place.

Then it all started to go wrong.

It started with a banquet. With so little time left in his stay at the fortress, the ambassador didn't feel any particular need to participate in the small talk of the table. He listlessly stirred his split pea soup while the lords and ladies talked pointedly over his head (he had been upgraded to a position four seats down from the king's end of the table after the Lady Cachonda comment. Arthur suspected the queen: the venerable lady herself was conspicuously absent). He was contemplating the pros and cons of actually taking a sip of the grey-green mush and had just started a mental list when he was taken by surprise by Vortigern Jr., who broke with the blanket policy of ignoring him to ask him something from three seats down the table.

". . .I'm sorry, what did your lordship say?" Arthur queried, cringing. That had been a bad move. He had better start paying attention: it would not do to appear ill-mannered. He would probably have to eat the soup now, too.

"I said milord Arthur has been rather quiet tonight. Not feeling so sharp?"

Arthur flailed for a pithy and unsuspicious response. He stalled by taking a bite of soup-soaked bread. Yes, the cons definitely outweighed the pros, and his concentration on being witty flew out the window. "Simply enjoying this delicious meal. As always, your staff has crafted a truly...unique dish." A few of the lords and ladies coughed into their napkins in nervous agreement.

"Perhaps milord would find it even more appetizing were he to use his knife on his bread instead of his hands."

Arthur was very confused as to where this exchange was going. That was borderline out-and-out _rude;_ the other boy wouldn't risk a comment like that without some hidden purpose behind it. Was it just another slur alluding to the Camelotian custom of eating with one's hands? No, they'd pretty much settled that point at the first dinner. Arthur had seen Vortigern Jr. (his first name was actually Edward, but Arthur simply couldn't think of him as a Ned without bursting out laughing) directing a squad of knights on the practice field. The young man was not fool enough to needlessly bring back an old and petty insult. Arthur decided to fish. "I thank milord for his earnest suggestion, but of course I prefer the practices of my home even while accepting this generous hospitality."

The only sounds at the table were the clinking and plopping of spoons in bowls and the crackling of the hearth doing its very best and still failing to reach the corners and banner-hung rafters of the high-ceilinged room. Vortigern Jr.'s eyes widened in triumph, and he glanced quickly at his father as if sharing an inside joke. Arthur noticed his long, greasy hair trail across the top of his soup as he turned back to say, "What, no cutting remarks?"

There was a gasp at the table, but Arthur wasn't taken aback by the frankness of his speech. He replied with an acid "I'm sure I don't know what milord means," and then he went back to his meal, effectively ending the conversation. He needed to stew over this. "Sharp," "knife," "cutting"...maybe this was about Arthur's throwing knife practice on the fields? It was considered a cowardly weapon. Unless... _no!_

Arthur retired early, passed a sleepless night on the red-velvet bed (which no longer seemed quite so comfortable), and in the early hours of the morning collected George and rushed to the Lower Town marketplace, only to freeze at the entrance. Creeping horror chilled his blood. Sure enough, Maggie's stall was empty. Standing near an adjacent stall, apparently having been haggling over vegetables until just then with a very befuddled and fearful vendor, was Vortigern Jr. in all his malevolent, greasy glory. He turned to wave at Arthur with a smirk.

 _Damn._ He would have to move up his timetable.


	6. Break

Break

Arthur crouched once more beside the bottom of a staircase, only the lightness of his hair betraying that he was not simply part of the shadows surrounding him. There was no time to disguise it; it wasn't that distinctive anyway, and he could always throw some mud on it on the outside. There was no time to hesitate, mourn Maggie, or think about anything except the plan. Get in. Get out. The hallways felt like the gullet of a massive snake that had swallowed him whole.

The stairway currently sheltering him was outside of the quarters of the captain of the guard, currently snoring away due to the strong herbal extract Arthur had dropped in his milk when he'd "bumped" into a tray-carrying servant in the hallway. Having made absolutely sure the man had drunk his tea with milk and was out cold, Arthur turned and stole on soundless feet back down the corridor toward the dungeon, the soles of leather boots barely touching the floor. This time, all knives were at the ready.

It was half past two in the morning when a dark cloud drifted down the staircase to the prison antechamber. The six guards were at their post, embroiled in their usual game. Arthur slipped off his cloak to reveal the guard uniform Maggie had bought for him off of one of the more money-grubbing men at the wall, whose secrecy she'd ensured with both gold and threatened steel. With only a bit of dirt disguising his face, the disguise wouldn't hold up long, but he just needed them to let him get close enough without calling out. Once he had made it five steps into the circle of light, it would be all over.

It was eight steps to the outer edge of the warm yellow ring. Thirteen in all. Arthur counted in his head.

 _One. Two._ They hadn't noticed him yet.

 _Three. Four. Five._ A man with a scraggly goatee won a toss and loudly celebrated.

 _Six. Seven._ One of those at the table looked up. An expression of surprise and confusion passed visibly across her face.

 _Eight. Nine. Ten._ "You there!" she called out to the dim figure, whose face was still in shadow but whose uniform was visible. The others looked up as well, registering his presence.

 _Eleven. Twelve._ "Hey! I'm talking to you!" the original guard squawked. The others shifted nervously halfway into defensive stances. The slightly short, silent guard was getting uncomfortably close. He was in the light, and did the expressionless face looked a little familiar? One of the guards suddenly, got it and he opened his mouth to sound the alarm.

" _Int–"_

 _Thirteen._

Arthur exploded into motion. First, he lunged for the one yelling, who stood in the back of the group, and jammed a hard sword pommel into his throat, effectively shutting him up. He squatted low and backhand stabbed his left-hand knife into the man's stomach, exposed under a sloppily-secured breastplate, as he he whirled around to face the next two assailants. They had barely turned around before he'd thrust a sword into the vulnerable side of one and kicked the other in the stomach, doubling him over to where he could wrench off his helmet from the back with the knife hand, leaving his throat open to the sword's bite.

The remaining three processed enough to get a little distance between themselves and the lightning-quick attacker. The woman who'd spoken first approached cautiously, sword drawn, eyeing his unprotected head. The other two seemed frozen but would soon remember to yell for help. Arthur would have to make this quick.

Parry, riposte. An uppercut, easily blocked. A swing for the side, also blocked. She was good, but she was a traditional two-handed broadsword wielder; she had never faced someone with his style of fighting, blending fencing with a light sword and back-alley knife sparring. His father was an end-justifies-the-means sort of ruler. A violent but clumsy slash down, requiring both hands to throw off. In the split second before she can give ground, slip the knife under her guard.

The two guards still standing turned to flee. They didn't make it to the base of the steps.

~o8o~

Having grabbed the keys from above the guards' table, Arthur sprinted through the prison area. He hoped to get out quick to save his own skin but also for the guards' sake: only two or three should be dead, and the rest had life-threatening injuries but could be spared with proper medical attention. Regardless of his father's philosophy on eliminating dangerous future variables, Arthur didn't like to kill unnecessarily. That said, he didn't have many qualms. These were hard times. The twist in his gut was just another thing to toss to the back corners of his conscience.

Arriving at the last cage, Arthur hurriedly jammed key after key from the medium-sized ring into the lock, succeeding on the fourth try. He roused the sorcerer, which was pulling itself to its feet while drowsily and indignantly asking what was going on, with a flat, clipped "We're leaving. Now." It was awake in an instant.

Arthur swung open the cell door and stepped inside for the first time. The lamplight, usually so amiable, only threw the shadows of the bars in stripes over everything, and there was a faint smell of mildew almost smothered by the stinging cold.

Hurriedly, the thing stepped out of the way to indicate the chain that was padlocked around a cage bar, keeping it from approaching the door. It was apparently no longer on time-out, since now its hands were only cuffed in front of it with about two feet of chain providing decent mobility. Arthur wordlessly tried the keys again on the padlock bolting the longer chain to the wall, which gave with a satisfying _crunch-click._ The sorcerer quickly reeled the now-dangling chain in and wrapped it around the knuckles of its right hand, then turned toward Arthur for further instructions.

He would have to touch the thing again, wouldn't he. The concept sent shivers down his spine: he knew that without all the cold iron around, a magical creature could kill or curse a person on contact. Well, there was no time for that sort of thinking just now; at the moment it was simply an asset, nothing more. Arthur grabbed the sorcerer's wrist (which some part of his mind noted just felt like a person's wrist, if slightly cold) and, pausing only to grab Arthur's discarded cloak at the bottom of the stairwell and throw it over the shoulders of the boy-creature, this time they _both_ ran like hell out of the dungeons.

~o8o~

They had almost made it, with minimal stumbling, to the second phase of Arthur's plan when the sound of clattering footsteps and raucous voices drifted around the corner of the winding, darkened corridor they followed. _Damn. Damn, damn,_ damn. Monsieur Greasy must have changed the guard patrols after catching onto Maggie: no one was supposed to come down this hallway until morning! There were very few branch-offs to escape down as well, and they were all up ahead. Arthur felt as if he was finally reaching that giant snake's digestive tract.

The sorcerer was doubled over and breathing hard next to him, but at the sound it straightened up, a look of pure terror twisting its features and causing the tattoos on its face to seem to writhe. Arthur could hear his own heartbeat loud in his skull. Wait, no, that wasn't his heartbeat; was it the asset's? Could the guards hear it, too? Oh my god, they were going to die, there was no escape, the walls were closing in to crush them, get away getaway getawaygetawaygetaway _GETAWAY!_

Oh. It was just like that first time in the dungeon. With effort, Arthur steadied his inhalations; the boy next to him was barely breathing in shallow bursts. With effort, Arthur switched back to thinking tactically and silently pulled him further down the corridor to the first unlit split-off from the corridor, where they both crouched, listening. The heady, dizzying fear surged and crashed, making Arthur's vision swim.

Up ahead they could still hear the sentries' voices, slowly becoming clearer and more distinct but no longer raucous. They sounded tentative, and nervous laughter issued forth at every halfhearted joke. The clacking of boots on stone diminished, then stopped altogether.

"Oi, mate, why'd you stop?" rumbled one drifting voice (very close too close!).

"Well, I was just thinkin', what if we skipped out on shift tonight and slipped down for a pint? Patrol schedules are so messed up, 'ent nobody's gonna notice we's gone if we 'urry back before mornin'!" There was a subdued chorus of approving grunts.

A tenor voice with a bit more refinement in its accent rose above it. "And if we do get caught, it's our jobs and maybe our heads, lads. You willing to stake your livelihood for a drop of watery ale?"

A woman's voice now piped up, "But 'Arry, none of us 'as 'ad a drop to drink all evening! It's three in the mornin'; we're all half awake. A little somethin' would pick us right up and put us back on alert. And really, wot're the chances we get caught?"

Murmuring again broke out, and this time it seemed like the tenor guard (sergeant, probably) was about to break. The stentorian first voice lifted above the din. "You're all just afraid to go down the corridor! Wot, big, strong guards like you 'fraid a the dark?"

This engendered an even louder chorus of indignant dismissals, and Arthur's heart sank as the burning feeling in his throat retreated.

The footsteps came a few more steps down the hallway, and then the second man's voice spoke up again. "I 'ent scared of no empty hallway, but I do really fancy somethin' for me dry throat, and I'm sure you feel the same, Sarge."

The sergeant's voice was definitely dripping with watery, breathless fear this time. "Uh...yeah, I guess one trip wouldn't do us ill. Rolfe, you in agreement?"

The deep voice scoffed. "Yeah, sure, if all you sissies want to go get stumbling drunk I've got no objections."

"But if we're all such cowards surely, big, brave Rolfe wants to finish patrol by himself, doesn't he?" mocked the woman's voice.

There was a pregnant pause. Then Rolfe responded, his practiced relaxed tone not at all hiding the tremors of terror in his voice. "No, I might as well come with you lot. I like my ale as much as the next man. And _somebody_ owes me just enough from that last dice game for a good, 'efty tankard."

There was an ardent denial, and then the good-natured bickering and footsteps got farther and farther away until they faded out entirely. The boy next to Arthur caught his breath.

Not a boy, a creature. _Its,_ not _his._ No longer caught up in the danger of the moment, Arthur collected himself and jerked away from the trembling thing, pulling it roughly to its feet. "Come on."

They reached their destination fairly quickly after that. The laundry room was a cavernous space with none of the flickering torches that had lit the last corridor (though only enough to make out grey shapes in the space between two sconces). A web of clotheslines hung low under the weight of rows and rows of tunics, trousers, and capes for the rich and fashion-conscious. Some of the dangling sleeves were still wet, and an eerie _drip, drip_ echoed off the monochrome stone walls of the wide space. It took Arthur's eyes a few moments to adjust, and then he quickly strode forward. This was the most time-sensitive part of the plan. Clean laundry return started at three in the morning, but sleepy workers without fail didn't make it in until ten minutes past, so Arthur had five minutes to prepare.

Releasing his death grip on the sorcerer's arm, Arthur jogged to the nearest dirty clothes vat and shed his armor, hiding the guard uniform under a towering pile of soggy tunics. He snatched a (comparatively) clean servants' uniform from a heavy, drooping clothesline and yanked the beige tunic over his head. Luckily it was only slightly damp. Finally, he jogged over to the giant, wheeled wax-sealed wicker baskets used to cart around large loads and, most importantly, to deliver in the mornings. He wheeled it over to the sorcerer, who hadn't moved, and bumped it against his–its!–leg. "Get in."

The creature whipped around and backed up a step. "In where?"

Arthur huffed impatiently. They were taking too long; this was _not_ good. "Wheelbarrow. By your left leg."

With agonizing slowness the sorcerer felt the rim and then pulled himself into the basket. It made a small noise of surprise when Arthur started dropping clothes on it but otherwise lay still in the bottom, seemingly having grasped the plan despite never having heard it explained. With about a minute to spare, a young, blonde servant wheeled a basket full of brown groomsmen's uniforms out of the echoing laundry room with its eerily dangling weights and into the hallway that would take him to the gate and freedom.

~o8o~

Arthur took a final left out of a hallway smelling of stale cinnamon, pushed open a door, and gratefully inhaled the icy, fresh air. It was a chilly morning, with soft grey light just beginning to bring out a contrast between objects below and the star-flung sky high overhead. Without sunlight to kiss the yellowish stone walls of the fortress, it was simply a pile of greash rocks at his back, no longer feeling quite so massive or claustrophobic in the face of the infinite sky.

A young woman dressed like him with a similarly piled wheelbarrow came out of another servants' entrance to his left and called quietly to him with a friendly wave. He nodded back with a smile as she split off to deliver her laundry and he headed toward the side gates.

As soon as he had a chance, Arthur stopped next to a recently-watered potted sapling to rub some dark earth on his face and hair. It wasn't very effective with regard to the latter, but it did do a good job changing his complexion. The no-longer-ambassador hoped it would be enough. There were two more tests left, two more opportunities for everything to go sour (well, he was smart and experienced enough to know that every tick of the clock was an opportunity for everything to go sour, but he preferred not to think about that). He would have to pass inspection at the castle's inner gate, pass through the lower town market, and then again be assessed at the outermost gate of the citadel, where his disguise and alibi would have to change if he wanted to pass through without suspicion or detention. From there it would be a straight shot to Hunter's Wood, where his father's men could take over. All things considered, the escape was progressing smoothly.

The lump of clothes in the false servant's basket shifted once with and audible sigh and then again lay still, perhaps sensing the change in the air. Arthur wondered if the thing underneath knew he was outside. Arthur supposed it was all right to think of him as a _him;_ in a few short hours he wouldn't be Arthur's problem anymore, anyway. And it seemed pointless (Arthur's first thought was "needlessly cruel," but _that_ was a stupid thing to think about a sorcerer) _not_ to let him know they had made it through the doors, especially if it would warn him not to move around like that again.

Arthur kicked the side of the basket lightly to get his attention, then, with a final glance around for witnesses, leaned down to whisper.

"We're out."


	7. Out

Out

The laundry basket made it past the first gate easily. A servant bringing uniforms for the groomsmen, whose place of business was located outside of the castle's immediate vicinity (for odor reasons, he'd heard–the queen was rather finicky) had raised no red flags. As Arthur jogged through the rather expansive township toward the second test, his mind sort of split into two, one side of his brain on high alert for any threats and the other half wandering to relieve the tension, like the semi-meditative state employed on long stakeouts. The guards hadn't recognized the foreign visitor at all, and Arthur found himself in the odd position of for the first time silently thanking his Norse ancestors for being as...energetic as they had been, making his face not a remarkable one in these fractured kingdoms many years later. Or maybe he had the trickster god Loki to thank; with his many forms and disguises, the god would be a fitting patron for Arthur's quest here. However, if his nurse's legends were to be believed, the guy was still chained in a cave somewhere with a snake spitting on his face, so maybe invoking him wasn't the best idea. Arthur wouldn't want to start Ragnarok just yet.

As his musings followed this path, he couldn't help but dredge up another memory from that time.

 _"And Thor threw off his veil and seized the hammer, and with a mighty bellow he rained blows upon those wicked jotuns like they 'adn't never experienced before, and they rode into Asgard triumphant on Thor's carriage, its goats' 'ooves clattering on the golden streets to show all the Aesir that their 'ero had returned and could protect 'em again from any attack of frost or fire. There would come a day when the golden cobbles would melt and run, when wolves would swallow the light and the gods' chess pieces would be left scattered on empty fields, but the day 'ad not arrived."_

 _Her husky voice trails off as his sleepy eyes start to droop closed. The room is dark except for the soft golden glow of the candles on his night table and silent except for their steady breathing, hers deep with a slight wheeze and his higher-pitched and sluggish. But he doesn't_ want _to go to sleep right now; he wants another story! Forcing his eyes open and ooching up from under the heavy blankets thrown over him, the boy turns on her his most appealing puppy-eyed gaze, the one which seems to break everyone except for his father. "Can you please tell me another one about Loki? The way he tricked those giants was so cool! Would you tell me again about when he stole Sif's belt? Or when he stopped the jotun from building the wall!"_

 _At the time, he doesn't even register the stiffening of her spine. It will take a few years before he will understand the meaning behind it. "My liege, I don't think you understand. Loki may seem to do good things sometimes, but he does 'em purely for his own reasons and ambitions. 'e's the bad guy."_

 _"But why? He helped out Thor and saved errybody," he argues adamantly, exhaustion causing him to slur his words. "Mebbe if they'd helped him out for a change he wouldn't have gotten so mad at Balinor and made that blind guy shoot 'im. Mebbe there wouldn't even have to be a Ragranock. Grangagrock. Rangagrock?"_

 _She chuckles lowly, but there is an edge of increasing fear in her voice, and she checks over her shoulder for dark corners where a minute ago there didn't seem to be anything beyond the comforting globe of the light. "Well, but 'e's selfish and greedy, and all of the good 'e does is to fix 'is own mistakes or to get in the other gods' good graces so they don't throw 'im out for his crimes. He uses magic and trickery instead of fighting with honor. And, well, 'e'_ s _a jotun, no matter if he is Odin's blood brother, so he can't be trusted. And he_ will, _in the end, bring about the End of Days."_

 _The boy is considerably more awake now. The sudden urgency in her demeanor scares him. He can hear, behind her carefully chosen words, her terror whirling like a hurricane in a jam jar, under immense pressure and keeping everything poised at the breaking point. "Lena?"_

 _She leans forward to grab his shoulders and stare him straight in the eyes. "My liege, I need you to promise that you won't go tellin' my silly stories around, not to your friends or even your father. I mean, not that you should ever lie to 'im, but 'e'd probably just ask why I was fillin' your head with silly old stories from a dead era." Her smile is too thin and too wide, too panicky. He nods wordlessly, which she seems to accept. "Alright, then, how about one more good Thor story before bed, yeah?"_

 _He shakes his head. "No, thank you, Lena. I'm really sleepy."_ It occurred to him now, and disturbed him, that he could not remember her face beyond a dim impression of rounded cheeks. Her voice, however, he could hear in his head like it had all happened yesterday.

 _"All right, my liege, good night. Sleep tight until the morrow." She blows out the candles and exits the room. It rightfully should take him a long time to stop staring into the darkness after that, but he is very small and very tired. He falls asleep immediately._

Huh. Arthur didn't know why his memory had hung onto that evening so vividly. Yes, it was another Purge sign, like the stares and the whispers and the slammed shutters, that he'd only recognized afterward. But still. They were just stories.

~o8o~

Coming down a quieter street, Arthur took a sharp right through the open doorway of a rare one-story building squeezed between two teetering neighbors. Arthur didn't trust the construction of any of the wooden contraptions, even the nicely painted city houses in the well-to-do inner town, but if possible the one-story concerned him more than its neighbors. Well, he just needed a minute of privacy from prying eyes, not rich furnishings. Or plumbing. Or a roof.

Which was good, because it actually didn't have a roof. The mound of damp straw in crumbling dried mud that had previously failed to block out the elements now sat on the floor underneath, being slowly spread and ground into dust with each heel turn. Arthur had unceremoniously tossed all of the clothing out of the wheelbarrow, leaving the sorcerer to clamber out on his own while Arthur ran to the other room to grab the two nondescript stained, grey-brown tunics stashed there in preparation. He tossed one to the sorcerer and was caught off guard, a shiver running down his spine, when the blind boy's hand snapped up to catch it. The tenseness of the moment was diminished, however, when the clumsy oaf immediately fumbled and dropped it.

Arthur worked in silence, quickly changing clothes while sending nervous glances at the door and then dashing to stash the wheelbarrow in a grimy corner. When he looked back at his companion, he almost had a fit when he realized the other had done nothing and was simply holding the bundle in apparent confusion. Did the boy not grasp the urgency of the situation? And Arthur had been thinking him quick on the uptake for a peasant. "Hey! You have to put on the shirt!" he whispered hoarsely.

Arthur realized his mistake when the sorcerer turned to him with a stricken expression, displaying his manacled hands under the draping cloth. "With what arms? Can you get these things off of me?"

Arthur's hand moved to the key in his pocket, and then–

–against all logic, he hesitated.

He knew he had to take off the handcuffs for them to escape. It wasn't even a choice. Yet his intestines tied themselves into slip knots at the thought and pulled tight. Magicians had killed his mother. Magicians had killed hundreds of his father's men. This _boy_ had, it seemed, killed hundreds of his father's men. This boy could kill him in an instant. The air felt dry, and he tasted dust and grit coating his parched tongue.

The boy in question huffed in frustration. "Look. "I'm a blind, undernourished escapee who's never had to navigate anything but the inside of a 6 by 10 cell by hearing; you're healthy, well-fed, several inches taller than me, and WAY too good with a sword. What am I going to do?"

Arthur swallowed the dust. It tasted acidic in his throat. "Magic, idiot."

The sorcerer grimaced, then reached up to give two hard flicks to a snug metal armband Arthur hadn't noticed on his right bicep. It clanked dully. "Witchbind. No magic for me. Now, if you could get _that_ off, we could really get cracking."

Oh. Well, then. Arthur stepped closer to examine the band. It was a genuine witchbind–he'd seen a few before in his training. The dull, cold iron was engraved with rough and primitive-looking but also somehow gracefully looping patterns; the flesh around it was both inflamed and bruised. Arthur reached back for the key and realized he'd brought the whole ring. Examining it in daylight, he saw the large grey key to match the keyhole on the manacles. He also definitely saw a smaller grey key covered in rusty sigils like a child's stick drawings in hard clay: the witchbind key.

Arthur unlocked the manacles. He returned the key ring to his pocket. It hung a little heavy there, he noticed.

~o8o~

Ten minutes later, two dirtied peasants arrived at the outer gates. One had heinously dirty brownish-blonde hair and thin lips pursed thinner by strain; the other had a bandaged face under a deep hood and jumped at every loud noise. Both of them wore ill-fitting and threadbare outfits that would've been considered high fashion in an impoverished town that had been under siege for months. The guards had seen odder.

The gates were huge, imposing things, made of oak and set into dark, reddish stone walls that contrasted with the general aura of lightness leant to the place by an abundance of the indigenous yellow rock from which the castle keep and bailey were hewn. Two sentries were stationed on the inside of the gates, checking travelers' identification papers and occasionally letting someone outside, and two paced the walkway on top of the walls. Arthur didn't know how many were on the other side.

With one hand at the sorcerer boy's elbow, he guided them toward the gate. The guard on the left gave them a bored once-over. "Papers, please."

Arthur gave her a cool glance, matching her bored and generally irked ambience, and pulled their papers out from his waistband. They weren't forgeries but genuine Esseti travel documents. (Uther had a _lot_ of spies.) The guard gave them only a cursory glance before shoving them back at Arthur's chest. _"Thank_ you," he grumbled in his best irritated peasant accent.

The guard rolled her eyes but ignored him. "Two more!" she shouted up to the sentries on the wall. A grinding noise began to emanate from somewhere nearby, and a thin rectangle of light appeared and steadily widened as the heavy doors swung slowly open. Just a few more inches. Just a few more seconds, a few more inches and he'd be home free, he'd be _free–_

A heavy, mailed hand landed on his tense shoulder. Beside him, he felt rather than saw the sorcerer boy jump out of his skin as the other hand latched onto him. "Wait," barked a gruff voice.

Arthur turned slowly around to face the other guard, who was eyeing them both with suspicion. "Purpose of your trip?" he growled, blowing fetid breath into their faces.

Arthur hid his fear behind a veneer of impatience. "Well, as it says on our papers–"

"No," the guard cut him off, "I want to hear _him_ say it." He pointed to the sorcerer.

For a moment, everything froze. Arthur stared at the guard as the guard stared at the boy and all Arthur could think were all the dirty words he'd learned from Gwen and _damn damn damn_ bloody–

And then he unfroze and punched the guard in the face.

The man staggered backward, clutching his bleeding nose. His partner, no longer bored, gave a cry of alarm and drew her sword. She moved toward the other boy, but Arthur shoved him aside, ignoring his panicky, confused questions, and drew his sword to exchange blows with her. He finished her off and turned around to see the sorcerer standing stock still and facing toward him as the broken-nosed guard surged toward him from behind, weapon drawn. Arthur barely had time to scream a warning, and then he saw what the other boy had been so intently focused on as the sorcerer swung lightning-fast around to deliver a fist wrapped in the heavy chains of his manacles fully to the man's already bleeding face. This time, the guard went down, _hard._

The sorcerer turned back to face Arthur, breathing heavily. "Did I get him?"

Then there was no time to think as the clattering of mailed feet and the ringing of alarm bells and shouts filled the air above the city and the gates were closing again and Arthur was grabbing his companion's arm and dragging him in a helter-skelter dash across the cobblestones and through the rapidly shrinking rectangle of light and then they were _out._


	8. Paths, Plans, and a Good Man

Paths, Plans, and a Good Man

They were running. They were running _so fast_ and Merlin knew he should be afraid, he should be _terrified_ because they were probably being chased by knights on horseback who would kill them and he couldn't see where he was going and was stumbling and scrambling and had fallen over twice, and for all he knew he could be about to go off a cliff but _god,_ he was sprinting and could feel the wind on his face! The wind! And he could _feel_ the massive open space around him and the warmth of the rising sun on his skin and his pulse pounding wildly throughout his whole body, and he could smell the air, and it smelled like biting sweet grass and morning dew and rich earth and clean, cold sweat and _outside._ And he could hear! The wind rustling in the grasses and susurrating across what he somehow _knew_ was a vast, vast meadow, and the sound of his feet pounding on the ground so fast, as if he was borne by the wind sweeping across the plain and nothing could stop him; he could just soar above it all, and he could hear his heartbeat synced with his feet and so _loud_ and strong and _free._ He was _free!_ And _god,_ he would do anything to stay out here with the wind on his face. He would run forever, just keep going until his legs gave out and his ragged breath came to an end and he could just lie flat on his back in the cool grass and laugh breathlessly and feel the sky watching over him until the birds and the worms spread him to the horizons and made him part of this untamed place. If there was nothing beyond this wild dash, he would still be filled with this furious, rapturous, unquenchable joy rising up to the heavens' infinite blue that he had just now remembered. He couldn't stop smiling, so wide his cheeks hurt, and a wild, half-delirious cackle launched itself out of his chest between shallow breaths only to be snatched by the winds, but he couldn't stop smiling and even the burning in his legs and his abs and in that beautifully painful hopeful pit in his throat was something to be thankful for, something to love, another reason to never stop smiling like the world had never fallen apart.

~o8o~

Arthur was not smiling. This was it, this was life and death; everything depended on this dash. He risked a glance over his shoulder; since they were not yet being pursued, apparently the plan had worked out, after all. He had worried Maggie had not been able to bribe a groomsman into slowly poisoning the guard horses before her exposure, but apparently she had managed. The sentries at the gate had rushed for horses that would by now be sickly and frail; by the time they realized they would have to chase on foot, Arthur and the sorcerer would have easily finished the mile and a half run to Hunter's Wood and his father's men. He had also been concerned about whether the blind boy could keep up, but the other, albeit with far less grace (the first word that came to mind was "flailing"), was keeping up with Arthur's tight, controlled sprint. Arthur caught a glimpse of the other boy's face: he looked positively giddy and a little mad, with an exuberant grin as wide as the open sky stretching across his face and breathless laughter leaking out around his panting. Huh. Well, Arthur didn't have time to deal with some sort of breakdown; a few more minutes and they would be in the wood, and _his_ job would be complete. Arthur turned to check on him again and almost had a heart attack, racing sideways to intercept him and steer him back from where he'd drifted from their straight path before he horizontally face-planted on a protruding boulder.

The minute he touched the sorcerer's arm wild, savage, tooth-clenching joy wrenched at his back teeth, then coursed like superheated liquid lava down the back of his throat to do a centrifugal force loop-the-loop in the pit of his chest. Arthur immediately wrenched his hand away, inadvertently unbalancing the other boy and sending him stumbling to the ground with a cry of surprise. He ignored the indignant mutterings and did not offer a hand to help the sorcerer up, letting him push unsteadily to his feet on his own. "God damn it, stop _doing_ that!"

The sorcerer balked. "Doing what? All I did was fall when you pushed me over!"

Arthur started jogging again, a little slower. "I don't know, the–the creepy emotion thing! Stop getting into my head!"

The sorcerer looked a little red, although whether it was from embarrassment or the breathless dash Arthur couldn't tell. "Oh, that. I can't–" (pant) "–bloody well help that! I have a lot of magic–" (wheeze) "–and I think it might be leaking? Or something?"

Arthur ground his teeth. "Well, don't you know how to _stop leaking?!"_

"I don't know, do you know how to stop being stupid?!"

Great. Not only was the sorcerer Arthur was stuck with out of shape, he was also apparently _leaky. A few more minutes._ A few more minutes and none of this would be Arthur's problem anymore. He shoved down the leftover bubbles of (literally) infectious joy and ran faster.

~o8o~

Merlin _felt_ the change when they stepped into the forest. Not only was it cooler under the shade and sheltered from the wind, but he got a _feeling_ all around him, the same feeling he'd gotten from the people in the town and had misinterpreted as just the warm sunlight. The same glowing feeling he was getting from the taller boy to his...left? Maybe? It wasn't all that reliable and didn't really help him get around, but it was something. Surrounded by darkness in both the metaphorical and literal senses, Merlin would take whatever somethings he could get.

Arthur eyed the surrounding brush with distrust. Due to the warmer climate this was a more light, sparse, and scrubby forest than the thick evergreen woods around Camelot, but it would still provide adequate cover should they be targeted by archers or horsemen. He scanned the trunk of each beech tree they passed until he finally saw the first of the Lionguard's markings: a simple X like any trailblazer's mark but distinguished by the red stain within. He followed them from tree to tree, grateful for the sorcerer's being silent for once to let him concentrate on search patterns. They followed a burbling stream for a while before leaving its left bank for a more convenient barely-trodden deer trail, then trudged along that until, after about 25 minutes, they hit a fork in the trail. Sure enough, he found another marked beech on the left-hand side.

 _Wait._ He doubled back to the last X. Was it...deeper than the last ones had been? And the red dye within looked like a slightly different shade. Ignoring his companion's inquiry, he jogged back to the fork and searched the area again in a spiral pattern: no markings. The Guard could have just made another man do the scoring and had to dilute the dwindling ink supply. That was totally plausible and even likely. However, something about the situation put an uneasy twist in Arthur's gut. Was his father's men's path the right way, or should he take the other route and strike off into the unknown? He could hear the stream that way.

His decision was made for him by the sound of (staggering?) footsteps in the brush. Arthur slowly lowered his center of gravity and raised his sword. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the other boy grow very still, and he noticed suddenly that all the small bird and animal sounds around them were gone, as if the forest were holding its breath. (And what caused _that,_ Arthur would have liked to know. Or would not have liked to know, since he really wanted to be wrong in his suspicions of just how powerful the being next to him was.)

A man crashed out of the ferns about fifteen meters down the trail behind them. Arthur recognized the red cape of the Lionguard but not the face, a broad young mug, not handsome but not ugly and grizzled with many-hours-past-five-o'clock shadow. The soldier was limping heavily, and looking closer Arthur could see the fletching of an arrow standing out from the meat of his thigh. The look in his eyes was that of a man dangling by his fingertips off the edge of a cliff and knowing that no one could hear him. About to let go.

The guardsman pressed a finger to his lips and attempted to hobble closer as silently as possible before stopping. A strange look crossed his face, and after a second Arthur realized the man was caught as the focal point in the sorcerer's fear-projection. Grabbing the other boy by the shoulder while being careful not to touch the bare skin exposed by the rips in his sleeves, Arthur breathed, "He's a friend." This close, he felt the fear diminish, but only barely. The soldier struggled forward, and Arthur went to meet him.

The guardsman was breathing raggedly. "We were ambushed, Your Lordship," he whispered hoarsely in Arthur's ear. "They knew what our markers looked like, and they followed them to the campsite almost immediately after we arrived. No time to plan escapes, overwhelming numbers. I might be the only one left. You need to run."

Arthur kept his face calm and stern. Of course, internally he was screaming _CRAP! CRAP! CRAP!_ at unholy volumes, but this man needed to see a commanding officer. Arthur was trained for this. He was used to plans going south. He was _not_ used to plans booking it to take a vacation on a tropical archipelago. "His Highness must have had a backup plan in place. Were you privy to your orders in the worst case scenario?" Leaning in closer, he breathed, "Am I to..." He drew a line across his neck and inclined his head in the sorcerer's direction. _Cut our losses_ was implied.

The soldier gave a brief shake of his head, scanning the surrounding trees in the process. "His Highness wants the weapon at all costs. Your duties are clear: eliminate variables only in the event of unavoidable capture."

"And what is your condition, knight?"

The knight looked a little caught off-guard by the question. "Um, I can't run." His eyes went wide, as if it were just sinking in. Then they hardened. "I'll hold them off while you take the weapon."

Arthur nodded solemnly. "What's your name?"

Utred would disapprove of this. It served no tactical purpose whatsoever. It wasted moments when they could be running, and they would need as many of those as they could get. But he and his father occasionally had different definitions of the words "duty" and "honor."

"Uh, Sir Íobairt. Gregory. Or, um, Greg."

Arthur raised his head to look him full in those wide eyes. "You're a great man, Greg. Your family will be taken care of. However, if at all possible, your standing orders are to make it out the other side. I want to see you there."

The soldier blinked. "Yes, sir."

Arthur gave him a smile, and Gregory gave a watery one back. Then Arthur turned, grabbed the sorcerer, and whispered, "Quietly. Run." He caught one last glimpse of Gregory over his shoulder standing in the middle of the path, rigid as a boulder. Then they were off again.

Arthur tried to be cold, analytical. If the kingdom was going to survive, he had to be in that headspace. He had to complete his mission; to do that, he had to make all the right decisions and get _really_ lucky.

No, he couldn't think like that. He had his orders. He needed to chart a path.

The forest, which had previously seemed so light and airy, was making Arthur claustrophobic.


	9. Cards on the Table, Stains on the Walls

Cards on the Table, Stains on the Walls

It took a while, but boredom finally got the best of Arthur. He lasted about three days of trudging along interminable backcountry lanes until he finally terminated the silence on the banks of a stream after a long, sweltering day of walking. The lane they were following was ill-traveled but orderly, lined with larger stones and filled with light yellow, sandy soil like that of the riverbank, with patches of coarse, stubborn grass poking through at odd intervals. The sky was a brilliant, clear blue overhead, the clouds having long since fled westward from the burning sun that was now almost directly above. It reminded Arthur of the oculus he'd seen in a temple once when his father had sent him on a (friendly) (well, friendly- _er)_ diplomatic mission to faraway Greca. The silence and infinite, rounded sky turned the landscape into an open-air cathedral, and Arthur had never liked being judged from on high. While they crouched by the bouncing waters to refill their leather canteens Arthur eyed his companion sideways for a moment, then shook off his internal debate and wracked his brain for some casual conversation-starters. How would he start it off? Oh, wait, _crap._

"Hey, what was your name again? I didn't quite catch it the first time," Arthur ventured. His voice sounded too loud and cracked after the past few days of quiet, harsh and rusty in the still, open air.

Luckily, the other boy didn't seem to take offense. (As if Arthur cared. Which he didn't.) "Merlin. It's all right, I've been told I'm rather forgettable." The corner of his mouth twitched upward.

Wait, _was_ he offended? Arthur couldn't tell. He wasn't used to being sassed by servants (other than Gwen, of course. She was the exception to most rules). But the boy was smirking, so he couldn't be that annoyed. Not that Arthur cared about a sorcerer's impression of him; he was just bored.

After a bit of an awkward pause, Arthur offered hesitantly, "Well, I'm Victor. Like I said before. In–in case you didn't catch it before. I'm Victor." He mentally kicked himself. _Smooth, Arthur._

Without moving his attention from the slowly filling waterskin, Merlin replied matter-of-factly, "No, you're not."

"Yes, I am! I would think I would know my own name," blustered Arthur, caught off guard and trying to recover.

"You would think that, wouldn't you? But it's definitely not. You're someone, but you're not Victor."

"Well, that's the name I'm giving," Arthur huffed, closing his flask with a deft twist.

"I'm not calling you by it, Not-Victor. Ooh, that's what I'll call you! How're you enjoying your journey so far, Not-Victor? Shame you can't remember your own name, Not-Victor."

Arthur snorted. "What are you, eight years old?"

The sorc–Merlin finished filling his own canteen and stood up, closing it a little more clumsily than his companion. "Oh, like you're so much more mature than me! You can't be more than a few years older. What are you, sixteen? Seventeen?"

Arthur's hackles, smoothed a bit by the pleasant if confusing exchange, raised again. "Wait, how did you know that?"

Merlin stopped walking, brow furrowing. The expression made his facial tattoos seem to squirm. "How did I know that? I guess I've got this sort of sense for things, now that I'm away from cold iron? I don't know, it's not like seeing, or hearing, but I, like, _know_ when there's living things and there's this _glow,_ but it's not a glow, it's not like light... _ach,_ how do I even describe this? It's like trying to describe the taste of water."

"Well, if it's about your _magic,_ I really don't care," Arthur rejoined with cold venom, closing off at the reminder of Merlin's strangeness. He couldn't resist a dig, though. "I suppose, with your penchant for clever naming, you're going to call it _not-seeing?"_

Merlin chuckled, unfazed. "Hey, maybe I should change your name to Not-Witty. Short for Whitney, obviously."

~o8o~

They made camp on the fourth night under a wizened, rotting beech in a somewhat forested area. They passed a few cleared patches that had Arthur convinced there had been a town here at some point, but the few shacks were so ramshackle and rotted that Arthur didn't trust them not to collapse overnight. The beech wasn't much better–it was always a big risk to sleep under a tree while camping, especially one that seemed to be on its last legs, but the dark sky threatened rain and Arthur would prefer to risk losing a limb or two under the tree boughs than risk losing his lungs to pneumonia. The asset's–sorcerer's– _Merlin's_ –coughing earlier that day had been just a tad worrying, not that Arthur would comment on either the cough or the worry while not under extreme duress.

Merlin kept watch (heh. Arthur felt bad for finding that just a tiny bit funny) with his freaky unnatural life-awareness thingy while Arthur foraged for dry branches under the leaf litter like a common grunt. As darkness had fallen a chilled wind had picked up, promising to turn the unseasonably hot day into a frigid night. The sky, or what he could see of it through the silhouettes of jutting branches and wilted leaves, had turned a brilliant orange for the setting sun. It was early October, and Arthur felt like he could _smell_ the autumn in the air. He'd been surprised by the lack of color on the trees, actually. He came from a land of evergreens, but he'd spent a decent amount of time travelling. This area was fertile, yet the changes had only just begun to paint themselves along the edges of maple and aspen leaves, and it was looking like they would wilt and fall before any full transformation could take place. At least the deep orange sunset, now reddish and darker, reflected off the tops of leaves and provided a sort of illusory fall.

Arthur trudged back to the clearing, ducked under a branch, and settled down with a grunt in the leaf litter, then rearranged himself to sit cross-legged. After a moment of enjoying being able to rest his aching feet he leaned forward to sweep a clear spot in the dirt for a campfire. He'd covered their tracks pretty thoroughly and set false ones, so he was pretty sure they'd thrown off their pursuers enough to make this a worthwhile risk. Merlin sat against their sheltering tree, one lanky leg pulled up to his chest by his arms and one kicked out straight, eyeless face turned directly toward Arthur. Arthur suppressed a shudder from some deep, primal part of himself, allowed his gaze to wander down to double-check the witch-bind, and then focused on the practical. Merlin's clothing was looking the worse for wear. Arthur supposed his own was, as well. He'd studied up on his Esseti geography: assuming they were walking about 50 kilometers per day, it would take them maybe nine days to cross the border into Sinhasana, which was friendly to Camelot and would provide transport home. If they wanted to get through nine days undetected, they would need some new clothes, and anyway the packs they'd grabbed from the abandoned house in the lower town were running dangerously low on food. Luckily, where there was a stream, there were towns.

A few hours later they had a crackling fire going. Arthur sat by it, sewing a makeshift hood made from the fabric of an extra winter coat onto the collar of the coat Merlin had actually been wearing. If they were both going to go into town, they would need something to hide Merlin's face. Arthur steadily punctured the thick fabric again with the needle and thread meant for stitching up wounds. It was calming: in, out, repeat. Watching the needle dive back through, he let his mind wander. In a rare stroke of luck, there had only been one wound _to_ stitch: he'd caught a glimpse while they were changing the dressing on a sluggishly bleeding gash just above Merlin's right hip. It was actually an older wound, presumably torn open by the running. Merlin hadn't even noticed. Treating it in silence had been awkward. Awkward like right now.

The flames cast weird, flickering shadows across their faces as Merlin scooched closer to the warmth. For a moment, Merlin's tattoos looked like a nest of worms about to writhe right off his face, and then the moment was gone and they were just inked lines. He settled across the circle from Arthur and licked his lips. "So," he said with a light chuckle. "How's your day going?"

Arthur snorted just a tiny bit. "Nice small talking skills."

Merlin grinned. "Thanks. I like to think of myself as a suave, debonair social savant."

Arthur snorted louder. "Oh, definitely." They lapsed once again into subdued silence, watching the flames (or at least turned toward them, in Merlin's case).

 _Wait._ Arthur frowned. "Where'd you learn a word like _savant?_ You don't strike me as a courtier's kid."

Merlin's smile grew wistful, his body language becoming just a bit less guarded than Arthur had seen before. "Yeah, no. I'm your average country clodpole, but my uncle used to be a famous doctor working in the castle. Picked up a few things. Then he almost took a job in some other country, but Mum came down with the pox and he decided to come home instead. Ended up tutoring me for a while. I can even read!" Suddenly, his face crumpled, and he looked away. Arthur felt a pang of dulled grief. Oh. He'd probably just realized that skill wasn't really relevant for him anymore. Maybe he hadn't really processed how much he'd lost. Arthur wondered how long ago it'd happened.

Anyway, huh. He was educated. Maybe Arthur shouldn't take the other teen as lightly as he would some other bumpkin with magic.

Arthur decided to push more if the guy was feeling talkative. This was the real question, really. "If you grew up in some backwater village, how did you end up where I found you?"

Mistake. Mistake, mistake, mistake. Merlin's jaw clenched, and his head swung back to face Arthur with an eerie motion. Like a snake's. The tattoos looked like something dark and unspeakable, an oozing, corruptive blackness swallowing up Merlin's face. The fire dimmed, pushed down to embers suddenly as if it had been stepped on by a giant foot. Arthur registered whispers in the forest behind them. They didn't sound like the wind.

"Let's skip the pleasantries, Vic." Arthur didn't like the way he said the name. In his mouth it sounded less like a diminutive for "Victor" and more like one for "victim." Merlin continued, "I assume we're not just walking randomly in a straight line. And I doubt you're working alone. Is there some rendezvous point we're aiming for? And who are you working for, anyway?"

Arthur debated what he could tell and how much he should lie. After a minute, he muttered, "We're going to Sinhasana. It's the closest country not allied with Essetir." He avoided the other question entirely.

Merlin frowned like he wanted to say something, but Arthur cut him off. He wanted to get an answer to something that had been bothering him. He also wanted to distract the other boy: the whispers sounded closer. When asking for the manacles off what seemed like forever ago, Merlin had implied it was the threat of violence that kept him with Arthur, but that didn't seem right. Arthur was trained to sleep lightly, but he did sleep. "Why are you still here, with me? Do you feel obligated or something?" He tried to use a casual tone to belie the tension in his body. He needed to know this if he wanted to use whatever it was to keep the sorcerer there. Discreetly transporting a prisoner was not an easy feat for one person.

Merlin's jaw clenched again and the vein on the side of his neck stood up, but his tone was light. The whispers abated a bit, and the fire got slightly brighter. "Where would I go? At the moment, my only special abilities are contagious mood swings and 'kind of knowing where things are, sometimes.' I would either fall in a ditch before I made it two meters or end up down some back alley with a knife in my gut. Or back where I...was." His tone lost its lilting, joking edge, and his faint hissing accent-which Arthur had begun to overlook-sharpened just a bit. "But let's make one thing clear." He was maybe three meters away, on the other side of the campfire, but he felt much closer. Firelight glinted off of his wide grin. His smile was empty, animalistic. A baring of teeth. "I won't be your victim, and I'm sure as _hell_ not your prisoner." In his loose-limbed posture there was no defensiveness anymore, only warning. _Cards on the table._ There was no need for Arthur to respond.

After that he should have slept more lightly, more warily than before during Merlin's watch. Oddly enough, he dozed more easily that night than he had any night of this journey so far.

~o8o~

The last few days had been tense. They had exchanged a bit of banter, but now that the adrenaline of escape had finally worn off, both were thinking more about the future and sensing more acutely the animosity between them. It was a clear afternoon, a bit colder than it had been but still not chilly, and they were walking down a back alley in Dwarsweg, a small but bustling township. Since it rested on the river from which the stream they'd been following originated, it was more of a trading town than an agrarian community, even having its own modest market to which flowed all foot traffic from the surrounding rural area. Two of the streets were even cobbled! Civilization! Wow!

Yeah, Arthur was definitely a city-slicker. All these loose cows made him antsy.

Speaking of civilization, or rather lack thereof, Merlin chose then to put in his two cents. "We should go left. If we head that way it should only be a few days' journey to Kutumbam."

"What? Why would we go to Kutumbam?" Arthur responded, annoyed. They were approaching the main street of the town, which had more of a _v_ shape and went a good distance in both directions. "That's a few days further and friendly to Vortigern. We have to go right."

"Well, you won't tell me what's waiting in Sinhasana, but I have no interest in some fool's errand to take out Vortigern–which is _impossible,_ by the way. I have things waiting in Kutumbam."

Arthur snorted. "Like what? What is _so_ important?"

"That's where my mum and uncle escaped to, and I need to meet them. As long as I'm not"–his face showed a painful struggle as he tripped over his phrasing and, almost, a loose stone–"with...Vortigern, you've done your job, right? There's no point in trying to recruit me. I won't throw my life away for this."

 _Crap._ Yes, keeping things simple was important, but he could have used a cover story. He'd had plenty of time to come up with one. _Um_... "That doesn't work. The rendezvous is a limited-time thing, and I can't afford to waste any dropping you off. You _owe_ me."

They emerged from the alley and temporarily quieted down. This was the market street. Arthur had finished modifying the cloak the night before, and now Merlin pulled the hood further forward to hide his scarred face as they plunged into the crowd. Arthur strolled ahead briskly, stopping first at the butchers' stand for a week's worth of only slightly fly-covered dried meats and then at a fruit-seller's for some grapes and apples to ward off scurvy. He kept his smile friendly and his tone regular. He switched his accent from the generic middle-class one he'd slipped into with Merlin (Camelot and Essetir shared both a language and an accent, but an intonation of class was still recognizable in the vowels) to a more rural, low-class one. He was any young traveler weary from the road. He left no impression but footprints in the dust, and those were soon covered up by the milling boots of other customers.

Merlin, in his dark hooded cloak, was sticking out more than Arthur would have liked but not dangerously so. He looked a bit overwhelmed in the crowd, startling and stumbling whenever someone brushed by him or bumped his shoulder. Of course, it'd been a while since the pair had seen anyone, much less everyone for miles, and Merlin had probably gone a long time away from the masses before their jaunt through the Esseti castle's lower town. Having negotiated the price of a two new tunics and pants down slightly and bought everything they needed for now, Arthur turned back to grab Merlin by the elbow and steer him through the muddle of chattering people into another alley for a brief break.

Apparently, Merlin was still unhappy with the plan (as he knew it). Arthur could see the tightness in his jaw, like he was grinding his teeth. Arthur wasn't used to explaining himself; he was used to being obeyed, and this was non-negotiable. However, in the spirit of pretending Merlin had a choice to ensure his continued cooperation friendship, he continued the argument. "I have responsibilities! You of all people should know what Vortigern is like; another day with him breathing is another hundred people dead. I need to contact the others working against him. We can't afford to stay in enemy territory longer than necessary for someone's mother!"

"I have responsibilities, too–to her!" Suddenly, Merlin was almost shouting, his voice echoing off the walls of the dim alleyway. Someone's window swung shut. Arthur wondered when this had escalated so quickly. He found his own face getting hot with frustration as Merlin continued, gesticulating wildly. "She's the only family I have left, she raised me on her own for years, and I will not just abandon her when it's my job to keep her safe! Spirits know I've done a _bang-up_ job of that so far." His mouth was set in a bitter line, nostrils flared, and Arthur could imagine him glaring mutinously. "If you won't take me, I'll have to find a guide or go it alone. I'll probably end up back where I was, which would be very bad for you. The only other option I see is for you to try to kill me," he hissed fiercely, leaning in close, "and that would be a _very_ bad idea." The air began to thicken and crackle with static electricity, raising the hairs on the back of Arthur's neck. He noticed that a few onlookers had entered the alley and were pretending not to listen in with carefully bland expressions. Panicking just a little bit, he grabbed the sorcerer–Merlin–by the shoulders and pulled him roughly into the nearest open doorway, the door of the (luckily empty) backroom of a tavern. The room was small and dim, with rows of stacked barrels and urns lining the greying plaster walls up to the ceiling and painting dark shadows in the grimy corners. What was visible of the walls and the bumpy wood ceiling had some sort of wavering yellow stain that became less visible when Arthur closed the door, leaving only the cold light coming from a small, high-up window to see by. The square of light fell across half of Merlin's face and his right shoulder like a badly-adjusted spotlight. Or an oculus. Arthur continued the argument in a hoarse whisper.

"You're willing to sacrifice the lives of thousands for one person just so you can live happily with your mummy? You'll risk letting what happened to you happen to someone else?" Arthur decided that the blatant hypocrisy of that statement, considering his own agenda, was unimportant at the moment. "How selfish can you be?"

"Call me selfish if you want to, but my only debt is to the people who give a crap if I live or die. Screw duty and all that military bullcrap. I will protect the people I love above all else, no matter the cost." His voice had also dropped low, dripping with venom. Arthur's chest started to get uncomfortably tight; it was like trying to breathe the thin air at the top of a mountain. It felt like a lit fuse was attached to his heart and things were inching uncomfortably close to an explosion. He knew Merlin's anger was leaking, exacerbating his own, poisoning his mind, and clouding his judgement, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

He just couldn't comprehend Merlin's viewpoint. His father had drilled into him for as long as he could remember that duty and honor to his people and to his position were the priorities. There was _nothing_ more important in this world. His father would sacrifice him in an instant–in fact, he _had_ for this very mission–for the greater good of Camelot. That was correct. There was no other way of thinking. It was just _right._

(Then again, that shadowy back corner of his mind whispered mutinously...he'd be lying if he said he wouldn't do a good many not-exactly-honorable things to have his mother back again. He pushed that thought all the way to the back of his mind, into the growing pitch-black lake collecting there. It disappeared silently into the lagoon, leaving barely a ripple on the surface, sinking to the bottom and settling gently in haphazard cluttered pile of his worst fears to slowly corrode, to _rust._ )

Before he could argue back, Arthur felt a hand clap on one of his shoulders. Hard-won instincts kicked in, and he grabbed it with both hands, one wrapped around the vulnerable thumb, using it to twist the body over into an awkward, half-crumpled position. His other hand went for his belt to grab a knife while his eyes flicked to the attacker's other hand, waiting for it to come up to try to free its counterpart, but the attacker's other arm was dangling with unnatural stillness. But that didn't make sense; the cry of pain had come _before_ he'd reached a point where the hold should hurt–Ah. The other hand had clapped _Merlin_ on the shoulder.

Now thinking rationally instead of in the automatic defensive patterns that had been trained into him (defend, contain, evaluate, repeat), Arthur was free to examine the attacker. The first thing he noticed was that he (yes, a he, a tallish young man) was not struggling like most civilians would be in this position. A smart move, since the thumb controlled the body and manipulating it could cause incredible pain or even permanent damage. What was more surprising was the fact that the boy didn't even seem scared. Arthur bent over to take a look at the attacker's face. Brown eyes met his own out of a face framed by longish brown hair, and was it his imagination or was there actually a real, goddamned _twinkle_ in those eyes?

The hunched attacker's upside-down face grinned. Grinned! "Well, aren't you a friendly pair," he quipped. "That really wasn't necessary. I was just about to ask if you two actually wanted some ale. Well, that's a lie. We can totally hear you from the front–thin walls–so I was going to tell you two to get a room. Which I can also offer, by the way, since this tavern is also an inn."

Arthur gritted his teeth. "And who are you?"

The new boy craned his head to toss a world-weary expression at Merlin (who, naturally, did not catch it). "Is he a bit daft?" Turning back to Arthur, he executed a slick maneuver that somehow ended with him back to standing up straight with his hand now in Arthur's in a regular handshake. Okay, that was _definitely_ a twinkle. Arthur wanted to murder this guy already. "I should think it obvious. I work here."

Oh. Arthur fought to suppress his flush of embarrassment. He'd made a scene in public for no reason simply because he'd failed to register someone coming toward him, a mistake he hadn't made since his second month of training. Making a scene could potentially be _very_ bad for his health, too; he was risking what Morgana would call "the sore throat of a lifetime." Arthur decided to blame Merlin's overflowing anger for clouding his senses. That, and the barkeep _did_ seem pretty stealthy. Suspiciously so.

Arthur realized they had been standing there in silence longer than was really advisable. They were making an _impression._ Not smart. Well, he couldn't go to Sinhasana without losing the asset's cooperation, and he couldn't go to Kutumbam at all. And now they had to ensure that this barkeep wouldn't talk about what he'd overheard–or about whatever Merlin had done to his arm–hopefully without Arthur having to resort to disruptive and attention-grabbing murder.

Wait, didn't his father have spies in this town? It was a major trading hub. He could get in contact with one of them and get money, information on the route ahead, or even another companion or two as an escort. That would make everything easier.

He smiled winningly. "Okay, we'll take a room for the night." Ignoring the confused, birdlike cocking of Merlin's head, he clapped the barkeep right back on the shoulder. "What's your name, by the way?"

The other teen's returning grin was roguish and infectious. "Oh, just call me Gwaine."


	10. Everything Goes to Shit

Everything Goes to Shit

On the first morning he was awoken by a screeching noise and light streaming in through a dirty window, giving the room a sepia tint. It was sparsely furnished and _filthy,_ with grime coating the stained walls of light tan wood and only one rickety chair with a solitary spider busily spinning between three legs. The two beds were raised about 15 centimeters off of the ground on rotting wooden contraptions that Arthur had half expected to collapse while they slept. The straw-filled mattresses covered with soiled blankets were splitting at the seams and told stories Arthur would rather not hear. It was the kind of hole he wouldn't want someone to find his bloody corpse in, much less his actual living person. He stretched and let out a groan. He'd never been a morning person.

"Up and at-'em, sunshine!" chirruped a cheery voice from the vicinity of the window. With bleary, dry eyes he made out the half-silhouette of the tavern-keeper in front of the window, grinning over one shoulder and casting a long shadow across Merlin on the other bed. It was _this idiot_ who'd drawn the soiled curtain away and interrupted Arthur's best sleep in _ages._ He found himself reconsidering his earlier reluctant decision not to murder the guy.

Across the room Merlin laboriously propped himself up on one elbow and then stopped, head hanging, that one effort clearly too much for him. Arthur could relate. Merlin's bed-head bangs fell across his face, casting shadows that obscured the eerie tattoos and the wreckage above. He looked like any other kid, far too young for this. Like Arthur. _(Where did that come from? Bad thought. Back to the corner for you.)_

Then he seemingly gave up, dropping back onto his face with a groan. He lay there for a minute before rolling over onto his back–and promptly rolling off of the bed. He dropped to the floor with a surprised yelp.

The barkeep (what was his name? Something with a G–Gareth? Galahad? _Gwaine_ ), who had been watching with interest and no small degree of amusement, burst out laughing. Arthur couldn't suppress a chuckle. Merlin lay on his back on the ground like a flipped bug, a reluctant smile flitting across the visible side of his face. "Wow. Look at you two prats. Laugh at my pain, why don't you."

Gwaine, still bent double by his cackling, strode over to grasp Merlin's hand and pull him to his feet. He then crossed to rip the blanket off of Arthur, despite the latter's mumbled threats. "Come on. Rise and shine, Princess. Day's nearly over, and I'm under strict orders to clean your sheets."

Arthur pushed himself to his feet and cast a belligerent eye over the bundled sheet. "Those things really get cleaned?"

Meanwhile, Merlin had fallen to feeling along the bedframe with something like reverence. "Wait, are the beds really raised? And these floors are actually wood! And I know we went up a _staircase_ to get here," he gushed breathlessly. "Gods, how much are we _paying_ for this place?"

Gwaine got a mischievous gleam in his eye. "Wow, I've never met someone so impressed by wood planks and water damage. One could almost say you were"–dramatic pause–" _floored."_

Merlin groaned loudly while Arthur stood in dumb shock. Jesus Christ, a bloody _pun!_ Arthur needed to get out of here and back among sane people as soon as possible.

He wondered how many days he could last in this idiot's company before he took out everyone in the building and then himself. Later, Merlin informed him that he and Gwaine had placed bets on that very question.

~o8o~

They stayed at the inn for two nights. Arthur searched the town up and down for his father's spies, but in the end he only knew their codenames and the drop points to contact them. No one showed up. After he explained his reasoning (well, sort of–he mentioned getting help and implied that he meant coworkers rather than subordinates while simultaneously planting the assumption that if they lived here, the organization was local) Merlin looked guilty and twitched at loud noises more than usual. Arthur remembered what Merlin had said about detecting Maggie and shoved his horror down deep under a generous layer of world-weariness.

On the second night, Arthur got around to the conversation he'd been dreading. He'd ascertained that Gwaine wasn't going to snitch on his own initiative because of some shady business his tavern was involved in, but that didn't mean he wouldn't tell the truth if the authorities came and questioned him. He cornered Gwaine when he came to make their beds. Mind you, this was at ten o'clock at night, and Merlin was already asleep in his. Arthur wondered how this inn was even still running: Gwaine was definitely not the ideal employee if he couldn't even manage six rooms. The beds only had one blanket each; they didn't really require much _making._

Arthur got up quietly and closed the door. He could see Gwaine watching him out of the corner of one narrowed eye.

"Hey, Gwaine."

"Yeah?"

"We need to talk about what you've seen."

To his surprise, Gwaine cracked up. He guessed it shouldn't have surprised him quite so much. The guy's sense of humor was in turns a bit twisted and very inane. "Don't hurt yourself glaring like that, Vicky. I already talked to Merlin. Nice kid. I won't snitch on you two."

Huh. Arthur frowned. Was Gwaine really stupid enough to have not noticed–

Gwaine continued, "Plus, even with the armband, his magic is awesome!"

Arthur gaped. "You know he's a sorcerer...and you don't care?"

Gwaine snorted. "What did you think I was going to do? Go after him with a pitchfork?"

Arthur's face must have betrayed that that was _exactly_ what he had been thinking because Gwaine frowned for the first time. "Most of us peons don't really care all that much. Undercover magical creatures are a few of my best customers. But I've heard from Merlin how you feel on the subject. Why do _you_ hate magic so much?"

Arthur scoffed. "Because my fath–I've never seen it used for good. Magic is unnatural, and it destroys people. It has the capacity to destroy everything."

"Well, yeah, _big_ magic does, I guess, but most people can't do that. Some people need magic to survive. How much money can some poor peasant woman save on coal when she can start a fire with a few words? How about purifying the water or saving her child from disease? I'm guessing that with your posh, city-slicker manners you've never had to face those kinds of choices, but I've learned a lot since I hit the road."

Arthur seethed. This was a stupid argument, and how dare this village idiot assume he didn't know anything about _hardship._ "Yeah, well, maybe people can _start_ using it with good intentions, but magic corrupts the people who use it. It's inherently evil."

Gwaine snorted. "That's complete and utter bullcrap. Who told you that?"

"No one had to! Sooner or later that nice housewife is burning down buildings, flooding her village, and sacrificing her child to some eldritch horror to spread the plague. I've _seen_ it."

"Really? Where are you from?"

 _Crap._ "Here. Essetir."

Gwaine had the gall to _laugh._ "Oh, yeah, that explains it. With how much magic is repressed here, the only times you hear about it are when it's big and bad and used by terrorists. You don't hear about the good people who do little things every day and fear for their lives because of it. I've been all over. When magicians aren't oppressed, they can do some pretty amazing things! Why d'you have to be so narrow-minded?"

Arthur's blood roiled. Something moved in the corner of his eye, and he glanced around to see Merlin shifting in his sleep, what was left of his brow furrowed. The emotion thing probably went both ways to some degree. He lowered his voice to an incensed growl. _"Magic killed_ my _mother."_ End of discussion.

Or at least, it had been the end when his sister'd had a similar discussion with his father. He still remembered being ten years old and hiding around the corner, cool stone at his back. He remembered the shouting and the echoing sound of a slap. _(In that moment,_ the shadowy corners of his mind whispered, _he'd hated his father, hadn't he?)_

Gwaine's tone was somewhere between amused, incredulous, and frustrated.He gave Arthur a _duh_ look. "Yeah, well, a sword killed my father. Doesn't mean I've sworn off _swords."_

~o8o~

Later that night Arthur lay awake for a long time, staring at his Aradonian penknife, turning it over with his hands. He'd been keeping the witch-bind key in the bottom of that knife's sheath, so the tip looked a little dull. Huh. Right. He still had the key. His hand drifted toward the sheath on the floor next to him (against the wall, obviously; not on Merlin's side), but then he realized what he was doing and stopped. _Let it be._ He turned his attention back to the knife. The light reflected warmly off of the gold inlaid in the handle and coldly off of the wicked blade. He thought the filigree on the handle looked a little more worn and tarnished than it had before this trip. Of course, he'd had to use it quite a bit back at Vortigern's castle to dull it enough so that Maggie could sharpen it. The knife was a gift from his father. He supposed all of his weapons were, really, but this one was personal, given to him on his eighth birthday. _"Happy birthday, son. You'll make me proud."_

Across the room, Merlin turned over and whimpered in his sleep. He was probably having a nightmare. Understandably, he'd had a lot of them on this journey. Arthur absently hoped Merlin didn't start screaming again.

Arthur didn't blame him; he'd seen his own share of nightmare fuel, but at least he'd had a choice in that. It had always been for a purpose: out of duty to his country and his people.

Merlin turned over again, murmuring something that sounded suspiciously like "please." _Does anyone really deserve that?_

Arthur frowned to himself. Of course he did. He used magic. If he hadn't wanted to get hurt he shouldn't have used it in the first place. Magic was evil.

 _But something like_ that... No! Gwaine's equivocating was just getting to him. He knew the truth. And Merlin _had_ done terrible things with magic! All those bodies on the battlefield that Arthur somehow kept forgetting about... Still, Arthur wondered if magical corruption still counted if you had used it under duress. Maybe he could ask his father to be more lenient once Merlin was in Camelot. As long as it was better than in Vortigern's dungeons, Merlin was still better off, right? And that was a very low bar.

Merlin yelled out hoarsely, his writhing causing the straw mattress to squeak and rustle. Arthur recognized the prelude to a screaming session. In the past he'd just let Merlin ride it out, but he supposed he'd never get any sleep that way, and anyway they were in an inn with other guests and thin walls now. They couldn't afford to attract attention. With a groan he got up and crossed the room. He used the handle of his knife to poke Merlin's shoulder (he had no desire for his arm to end up like Gwaine's had when they'd first met), then jostled him a little bit harder when he failed to awaken. "Merlin. _Merlin._ For God's sake, Merlin, what are you, some sort of princess? I hope not, for the sake of the kingdom that would have to put your face on things. Wake _up!"_

Merlin bolted straight up with a huge intake of breath, head moving frantically, and Arthur felt a stab of his panic. "What–where? ...I can't see. I _can't see!"_

Ugh. What was _Arthur_ supposed to do in this situation? "Yeah, dumbass, you're blind."

Not the most sensitive of approaches, but it seemed to work. One of Merlin's ears turned toward him. "Victor?"

"Yeah. You were dreaming. Go back to sleep." Arthur slumped back to his own pallet.

Merlin laughed breathily and a little hysterically. "Oh. Thanks."

Arthur grunted, and that was that.

~o8o~

On the third day, Arthur and Merlin were having breakfast in the tavern (some sort of beef thing with a lot of veins. Luckily there was also ale or Arthur may not have managed it) and not talking much when Merlin suddenly went rigid. "Do you hear that?"

Arthur's hand automatically dropped to his scabbard. "Hear what?"

"Boots. Lots of boots."

Both barstools were quickly pushed back in, and Arthur led Merlin semi-casually to the back of the room, skirting a group of bearded men playing a rowdy game of cards. He cast an eye around, assessing the tavern's defensibility. The entrance was long and narrow, halved by the bar and stools, and then it opened up in an _L_ shape to a nine- or ten-meter square room filled with round tables, mostly unoccupied, and with a hearth in the back. Arthur moved them to a wall closer to the entrance so they'd be invisible if anyone entered. Arthur put a finger to his lips, then realized the futility of this gesture. He thought about it for a moment before deciding Merlin got the gist. They both held their breath and waited.

Sure enough, there came three loud knocks on the door. Gwaine swept out of the back room with an impatient scowl on his face, then paused when he saw his two guests doing their best to imitate wall hangings and shot them an inquiring glance.

"Open up in the name of the king!" commanded a gruff voice. Arthur watched understanding dawn on Gwaine's face before he resumed his resolute march to the door.

Damn it, _damn it._ He would have to threaten Gwaine somehow, but there were too many witnesses! How could you threaten someone invisibly from another room? For a moment his thoughts drifted to the witch-bind key still in his ankle sheath...but no. They'd just have to run out the back room, but the alley was probably blocked. Run upstairs and jump out a window? Rooftop chase? Could Merlin manage that?

Never once did it cross his mind that Gwaine could _not_ give them up. Sure, the jovial innkeeper had _said_ he wouldn't snitch, but Arthur had been thinking at the time of just covering his tracks; once they were gone, since as far as he knew there was no reward for mere information, there would be no merit in giving them up. He still should have insisted on bribing the guy rather than taking mere assurances. But that wouldn't have mattered in _this_ situation since they were still in the inn. Betraying them would keep the guards from ransacking everything and finding Gwaine's smuggled alcohol and secret non-human guests (and whatever else he had going on). And they probably were offering _some_ reward if they were being this overt about searching for them.

But then, miracle of miracles, Arthur tuned back in (with the help of a sharp elbow to the ribs from Merlin) in time to hear Gwaine chirp, "Nope. Never seen them."

 _What?_ Damn, what had Merlin _said_ to this guy? Or was he just that dense? Well, Arthur wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He gripped Merlin's arm tightly and started edging toward the side window, the only one out of sight of the front door.

And then he heard some drunk guy at the bar blurt out, "Wait, those guys? They're right around the corner!"

And then everything went wrong.

Arthur skidded around the corner to get a quick assessment of how many were at the front door. Gwaine saw him and pulled a wicked-looking broadsword out from behind the bar while shouting, "Run!" Arthur counted maybe ten armored men, but they were bottlenecked in the small entranceway and could only enter about two at a time. Gwaine was holding his own, hacking and slashing with grace, but unable to wield his weapon to its full potential in the small space. Still, honor dictated that regardless of whatever duties were the priority, if there was any possibility of completing the mission _and_ helping, Arthur couldn't just _leave_ him there. By willingly offering aid to a knight beyond the stipulations of duty or brotherhood Gwaine had activated a part of the Knight's Code that Arthur's father hadn't taught him to ignore. He was honor-bound to help.

First, though, he ran back into the other room and snatched up the fireplace poker. He sprinted to press it into Merlin's hand, ignoring the other's panicked squeak. "Anyone comes near you who doesn't identify himself as me or Gwaine, run him through with this. Okay?" Then he was off, three knives already in hand. The last glimpse he caught was of Merlin, nose wrinkled in confusion, feeling along the length of the rod to the tip.

The bar area was lunacy. About six men had shouldered in, pushing Gwaine back about halfway to the main room. The guardsmen were fighting sloppily, probably in part due to the fear and rage Merlin was radiating from the other room. Arthur had learned to compartmentalize it and work with the rest, and Gwaine seemed to be managing. The drunks had all cleared out or were crouched behind the bar with minor wounds. One guy was flinging empty tankards at anyone and everyone who came near him; Arthur narrowly avoided being beaned on the head by a glass one that shattered against the wall. The three bearded men had pulled pickaxes from somewhere and...taken off their shoes? And lost six inches of height? Dwarves! Arthur didn't want to fight dwarves, too–but then one of them broke from their defensive position in the doorway and rushed at Gwaine's back. Before Arthur could react, the dwarf leapt atop the counter and flipped down into the midst of the soldiers, quickly dispatching one and parrying another. Dwarves fighting on Arthur's side? That was new.

Arthur himself went to join Gwaine, successfully blocking a sword before it could lop off the other's arm after a reckless swing. Gwaine let him take over for a minute to pull his long hair out of his face with one finger. "I told you to run!"

Arthur grunted, sliding onto one knee under a particularly vicious downslash. One knife slid under the chestplate and through a vulnerable leather tie while he used the other leg to sweep the guard's feet from under him, dropping the bleeding man to the ground to trip his companions. "No good options. Do you know another way–agh!" A stray swipe bit into Arthur's arm while he parried another. He quickly stepped on the grounded guard's stomach to flip over the two foremost and drive a knife into both of their ribs. Gwaine stood gaping for a minute before shaking himself and leaping back into the fray.

They were very much at a disadvantage, though. The walls hampered Gwaine just as much as the guards and stopped Arthur from even using his short sword, and the knives only made shallow cuts and stabs. Also, this time he didn't have the element of surprise like in the dungeons. The guards there had been sloppily outfitted and not even wearing helmets; these were fully armored killers.

Hissing from another slice, this time to the back of the neck, and the reminder that he and Gwaine were very much _not_ wearing armor, Arthur shouted, "Fall back!" and started backing away into the main chamber. Gwaine nodded grimly and quit the acrobatics to join him.

At the same time, Arthur became aware of a queasy twinge in his gut, slowly growing greater. His hindbrain started whispering, then more like shouting. Beside him Gwaine coughed, brow furrowed, then made a choked noise. One of the guards Arthur was fending off suddenly gasped and crumpled to the ground.

The drowning sensation got worse the further Arthur stepped back, and clearly others were feeling it, too. Water. Lots of it, all around him. Their steps backward became jilted, slow and lazy like a diver's walking with weights on the bottom of the lake. The pain of his cuts flared and became dull, muted, then stabbed in again. His vision seemed very clear, very _in the moment,_ and yet his brain seemed to be processing time oddly, in jolts and spurts.

From somewhere in the back of the fight came a regular noise. _Drip. Drip._ An overturned ale on the bar counter, maybe. Or blood.

A sword swung at his face, and as he dodged it seemed to be moving so slowly that he had time to see his reflection in the blade. Distorted. Wide eyes with black rims. Terrified. Was it a reflection in the metal of the sword blade or the water around his neck? When did the light get all weird? Blue and harsh, beams of light swimming and snaking through air that was almost rippling and gelatinous, muffling and bending all sound. Disorienting. The water was up to his ears now, and a silent scream was building up like a hurricane behind his eyes. His eyeballs were going to burst from the pressure. The air was being forced out of his lungs. He tried to gasp out one last desperate breath but all his mouth could do was open wide, too wide in a silent scream...

Slowly and with what felt like immense effort he turned his head, tried to ignore his lungs begging his heart begging his brain for _air, please,_ tried to ignore the bodies of the other two dwarves he almost stumbled backward over, tried to ignore their bugged-out fishlike eyes and drooling devouring mouths as they curled insensible on the floor, tried to ignore the slow _drip, drip, driiiiiiip..._ driving a drill through the roof of his mouth and into his brain, tried to ignore _everything_ and just turn his head to the left to see . . .

Merlin, standing against the wall perfectly still, holding the poker in front of him with a white-knuckled grip. Facing straight ahead, jaw so tense the veins in his neck were bulging out of his skin. Perfectly still, not even breathing, veins like metal, like rock, white knuckles on the poker, like a statue. Holding the _poker._

And the scars on his face, they were _weird,_ weren't they? He'd noticed before. They were like burns but also slashes, like something was _hot_ but also _sharp..._

Damn it.

He started running toward Merlin, but it was running in slow motion and there was no air in his lungs anymore, only water cold and heavy in his mouth and sloppy around his clumsy tongue and clumsy thoughts and slippery electric panic. And then he was there and grasping him by the shoulders and shouting in his face, _"Merlin! It's me, it's Arth–Victor! It's me, Merlin! Let go! It's me, you can let go!"_ And then he was struggling to pull away the poker, trying to pry off, drag off white-knuckled stony fingers like petrified tree roots a million years old before he, Arthur, _who's Arthur? He_ floated away and was lost forever drifting near the ceiling, embalmed in midair in this godforsaken tavern.

And then the finger-roots were finally pried away and he fell backward on the floor and gasped in one long, wheezing breath. The light was back to normal, back to a plain, early-morning white streaming through the dirty windows and falling uncaring upon the broken glass, overturned and shattered stools, stained walls, and the bodies strewn across the floors. That puddle of mead on the bar counter was still dripping steadily onto the floor. _Drip. Drip._

Slowly, Arthur pushed himself up off of the wood, warmed by the square of calm light from the side window. He stumbled a little upon standing. Merlin was no longer standing rigid and straight on the dark wall, instead hunched over and leaning with his hands fisted in his hair, gulping in breaths like a drowned man, completely in shadow.

They were the only two people standing in the tavern.

Arthur looked around, a little dazed, focused only on getting his breathing under control. The light shifted a little over the still scene. The bodies were all splayed or slumped in odd positions across the floors or the tables or the bar, but they all seemed to be shifting with gentle breaths. In and out. Breathing.

There was complete silence in the room. No noise from outside, either. Arthur wondered, again. How far it went.

Arthur realized he was still holding the fireplace poker, clutching it tightly in one hand. He threw it away with a gut-twist of revulsion and fear, like it was a snake about to bite him. The dull thunks echoed in the silence.

Across the room, Gwaine was the first to stir. Arthur didn't know how long they'd been standing there, breathing hard. _Drip. Drip._ The other boy groaned and sat up, one hand on his head. _"Ow._ Gods above, what the hell was that?"

Merlin made a single choked noise like a sob.

Gwaine, previously so graceful, stumbled to his feet, the hand not on his temple still loosely around the hilt of his broadsword. He looked at it for a minute in confusion, like he didn't recognize it. Then he turned in a full circle to survey the damage around him.

He whistled. "Damn. I am _definitely_ fired."


	11. Swords and Cloaks and Daggers, Also Cows

Swords and Cloaks and Daggers; Also Cows

They kept following the river for the next three days. This river was wider and faster than the stream out of the Hunter's Wood, and it was barren of fish so it earned few visitors. They had decided it was unsafe to follow any thoroughfares after the incident in town, and this way they could quickly duck down below the bank for easy cover or walk in the water for a bit if there were dogs on their scent. Arthur had to admit that it was...not entirely unpalatable to have Gwaine with them. His inane chatter and dirty jokes did a good job of derailing the awkward silence that, for all the easy banter they'd developed startlingly quickly in their week or so together, occasionally still fell between him and Merlin. The trek through the vegetation never lost its of urgency and tension, but now the air between the three was filled with grudging snorts of laughter (or groans, given Gwaine's punning propensity) more often than not.

The third day's dawning revealed a sunny blue sky streaked with wispy, long clouds like an artist had used a paint-scraper to spread white paint lightly over it. The area they'd encamped in was a brighter woodland, more tropical-looking, with few tall trees and mostly low vegetation that looked almost neon green. The zone was probably just recovering from a wildfire, with these vibrantly alive little plants feeding stubbornly on the rich but ashy soil.

Currently, Arthur and Merlin were arguing heatedly about cows. Gwaine seemed content to observe and occasionally fan the flames whenever they had almost reached a consensus.

"Are you _crazy?_ Keep a cow well fed and take it in during the winter and it'll keep _you_ alive for 15 years, easy. You get milk every day, the manure is great for growing crops, and you can tan the hide _after_ it dies of old age! It makes so much more sense this way." Merlin seemed to be alternating between flabbergasted and scandalized.

"Yes, but...beef."

"But–you–you're throwing away _pounds and pounds_ of gold for a few meals! If it's a heifer you can breed it and sell the babies or raise a herd. _That_ can keep you in fancy leather buckle-y breeches for the rest of your life."

"You separate the babies from their mothers to sell them? Isn't it kinder just to kill the adults at that point?"

"They're _cows,_ Victor. And knowing you you probably would prefer to eat the babies."

Gwaine interjected, "Filet mignon, man." He shot a wistful gaze at nothing in particular and toasted the sky before taking a suitably reverent swig from his water flask. Arthur nodded sympathetically. Merlin couldn't see this but probably predicted it since he looked extremely flustered by their attitude and verging on flammable.

"Gods, I'm surrounded by barbarians and entitled clotpoles."

Arthur blinked. "Oh, come on. That is not a word."

"What isn't?"

"'Clotpole.'"

"No, it is. It means like a stupid person."

The always-helpful Gwaine chipped in, "I thought it was another word for your dongle. I know so many dick jokes in so many languages that I sometimes lose track."

"Oh. In that case, Gwaine, you're a clotpole."

"He is, but that's not what it means!" Merlin reiterated frustratedly. "I guess it's farm town slang?"

"Please. That doesn't sound like a thing. You definitely made that up."

"Why would it not be 'a thing' if he made it up? Aren't all things 'things'?" Gwaine was now waxing philosophical and staring with intense sadness at a nearby boulder. His contributions had also been a bit more rambling and nonsensical than usual. Arthur suspected that his current waterskin contained a bit more than water, though as to how he could have managed it Arthur had no clue.

Gwaine seemed to be in an inquisitive mood today (dangerous things, those), and when no divine edict rang out in answer to his earlier query he turned clumsily to small talk. "So, how long have you two been friends?"

Arthur huffed out a laugh. "Friends?" They weren't _friends._

. . . Oh, God, they were _friends._

Casual friends, but still. Arthur was so stunned by that revelation that he didn't have a comeback when Gwaine's unsteady but still mischievous grin appeared in full force. "Oh, then are you an item? Because you bicker like an old married couple."

Merlin kept his profile to Arthur. Had it been possible, Arthur would have said Merlin was looking at him out of the corner of his eye. _"Please,_ Gwaine," he said, smirking, and though his tone was light and airy there was something venomous underneath. Or maybe just something...hurt? "I don't even know his real name."

Oh. Huh...Arthur supposed that was true. Well, of course it was true! He was a spy, and he was hiding who he really was! Plus, names had power.

Still, it wasn't like "Arthur" was an uncommon name. Quite the opposite, actually. And the current third heir to the throne of Hinay was named Victor and was only a few years older than Arthur. If he wanted to prevent Merlin from knowing he was a prince from his name, it was kind of dumb to call himself Victor. Plus, why would some country kid know what foreign royalty looked like? Oh, yeah, it wouldn't matter because he couldn't see him, anyway! All in all, it would really be easier to just use his own name.

Gwaine, on the other hand, was definitely noble in origin. He kept his fingernails neatly manicured and had the kind of sword skills really only trained into the children of aristocrats. Arthur wouldn't tell Gwaine his name directly because _he_ might know what the prince of Camelot looked like, but even if Merlin snitched, Arthur didn't look all that distinctive, really. Gwaine couldn't be sure. And _that_ was all conjecture for if Merlintold Gwaine, which was unlikely. As much as Merlin could be a clumsy oaf and couldn't handle a sword if his life depended on it, Arthur supposed he was competent enough to keep a secret.

So there was just one more thing to consider. Names had power... He thought back to that first night, to how terrifying and _other_ Merlin had been, screaming threats and sending out waves of pure terror. But then he thought about the next night. Merlin hadn't been scary. He'd been _embarrassed._ And now, despite everything he'd seen, he couldn't imagine Merlin hurting him on purpose.

(This was a toxic path his thoughts were travelling, now, for two reasons. Firstly, if that were so, then why the witch-bind? But every time that came up, he successfully shoved it back down into the lake of black sludge pooling at the back of his mind with a sort of _are you kidding_ scornful snort at himself with no elaboration. Secondly, he _could_ actually imagine Merlin hurting him on purpose, but only in one circumstance, and somewhere along some dismal country road he'd stopped thinking of the end of the path as much more than an abstract concept. He thought about seeing his sister and Gwen, of course. He thought about pleasing his father, telling him, "Look what I managed all on my own." But the ugly part of coming home? He'd only let himself think about that seriously one time, all alone at night in his head. He'd looked up at the stars and thought one sentence: _Maybe I can make him understand.)_

And so, that evening when Arthur got back from gathering firewood and saw that Gwaine was gone for the moment, he dropped his sticks at Merlin's feet and didn't immediately go back for more, instead sitting down next to him on the dirt. Merlin lit the fire with a quiet thanks, having been uncharacteristically subdued the whole evening. It was hushed in the forest except for the rustling of leaves under the deep violet sky and the song of a single cricket somewhere in the undergrowth. The scene reminded Arthur of that one night before they'd come into town, the night Merlin had laid his cards on the table. Only this time, he realized, they were on the same side of the fire, not facing each other over it. Arthur exhaled. It was time for him to do the same thing: lay out his cards, at least a little bit.

He didn't look up from the fire. "Hey. Nice to meet you. I'm Arthur."

Merlin showed no visible reaction for a moment, then turned to his companion. "That wasn't a lie," he said matter-of-factly.

"No, it wasn't."

Slowly, a smile spread across the scarred face. "Gods, you're a terrible spy."

~o8o~

Toward evening Arthur found his mind wandering, partly as a way to ignore the screaming ache in his thighs and glutes. (Since Gwaine had joined without any baggage they'd been rotating who carried the pack; he was on backpack duty that day.) He fell a little behind while Gwaine and Merlin shouldered the burden of conversation and Gwaine shouldered the burden of keeping Merlin from walking into things.

 _The boy can barely contain his excitement. He wasn't able to sleep at all last night, but he won't let tiredness take the air out of his bulging sails. Today's the day he starts knight training! Morgana's been telling him about this for years, showing him the new moves she learned that day or teaching him the Knight's Code. He knows it by heart now. This is his birthright! Plus, after today his father might have something to ask him about at the dinner table. He's always asking Morgana what she learned or what she thinks of this or that; now Arthur will have something to say, as well! And he can't wait to rub it in Gwen's face that he's a_ knight _(well, knight apprentice, but she doesn't know how it works) and that means he's a_ man _now. Not that he wasn't already at the mature age of nine._

 _He walks onto the field and tries to put a confident swagger into his step. Morgana told him that the men will try to intimidate him, belittle him. They won't pull their punches. She even leant him_ her _wooden practice sword for the occasion so they don't have the excuse to humiliate him more by making him use one of the unbalanced ones from the armoury._

 _The sword, too big for him though he'll never admit it, bangs against his legs and gets tangled between them as he tries to take long, confident strides onto the field. A few of the knights pause and look up. One mutters something to another, and they both snicker. Arthur feels his face heat up, but he won't let them get to him. They are just subjects, ultimately. To them the honor of knighthood is simply another profession, and they owe the opportunity to ply this trade and therefore their_ lives _to his father. To him, this is his honor and his birthright._

 _Still, he walks up with no small amount of relief to someone he knows, an older knight who's close to his father and has always been kind to him, talking to him when his father has banished him from the left hand to further down the banquet table because such-and-such ambassador or head of the Noble House of So-and-so must take precedence. "Sir Carroway!" he calls loudly, trying to draw himself up taller before this man who towers over him with his armored shoulders blocking out the sun. "Do you know who will be conducting my training?"_

 _Carroway chuckles. "So eager to serve his king. If all our men were like you, Camelot would have taken the whole of the Isles by now. Come on, I'll take you to him." The boy tries not to let his immense relief show._

 _The knight leads him across the field to a small wooden building set to the side of the standing armory like an afterthought of the architect. The boy looks around in confusion, but he doesn't ask his guide what's going on. Showing that you don't know something is showing weakness, and he's had to do it once already._

 _The door's iron hinges creak as it opens, and Carroway ushers the boy through first with a wave of his hand. The construction doesn't look any more impressive from the inside. The light wood walls have the uniform clean lines of all of Camelot's older buildings and look sturdy, but they're far from smooth and the building somehow manages to have a ramshackle feel to it. Dim butter-yellow sunlight streams in from between the slats, making the room on the whole bright enough but leaving plenty of irregular shadows about it. From inside, it feels more like the architect's half-remembered dream than his afterthought. There's a table in the middle covered in unfamiliar objects. The boy has never seen any of them before in all of his years living around the knights, but he can tell at a glance that they're weapons. The walls bear useful, commonplace things like backpacks and canteens as well as a large assortment of knives (Arthur at least recognizes those)._

 _Arthur turns around to make some comment, but the sturdy, reassuring bulk he thought was in the doorway behind him is gone. Frowning, he closes the door as quietly as possible and moves to stand and wait in the largest patch of sunlight. He's confused. This place looks like the armory, but it doesn't have the feeling of majesty or the overwhelming impression of gleaming metal, bright colors, and_ importance _that he's come to associate with knighthood. This place feels peaceful other than a sort of ambient energy, like the building itself is dozing lightly. This is no place for a knight. Is Sir Carroway playing a trick on him? Is this part of the hazing his sister has told him about? If so, it's a weird trick to play._

 _Bored, he casts an eye over to the weapons table. There's one that intrigues him, a set of leather-gripped batons on either side of a thin chain. He reaches out to touch one–_

 _"See anything you like?" inquires a wry, gravelly voice from behind him. He jumps about a meter. His heart hammers in his chest as he_ tastes _fear like the acid bitterness on the back of your tongue from eating bad romaine. He isn't alone._

 _There's an old man behind him, appearing about 70 or so but not at all stooped, standing tall and proud in a nondescript brown tunic. His skin is deeply tanned, and he peers out at the boy through unwavering brown eyes set just a bit too shallow in his skull so that they give the impression of bulging. Other than that, he could have been handsome once. His smile at the boy is polite and gives nothing away._

 _The boy swallows his tongue, shoving the bad lettuce down his gullet. "Good morning, sir. I'm Arthur. Are you to be my teacher?"_

 _The man moves past him, busy hands straightening the tails of something like a modified flail. He doesn't look up when he speaks, and the boy notices that when he moves, his body for the most part seems to smoothly slide between and through the patchy shadows. "I am," he answers in that same dry tone. Satisfied with the flail, he turns back to the boy. He looks down, and one eyebrow raises. He gestures at the wooden practice sword. "Oh, you won't need that."_

 _All the boy's excitement from earlier has transmuted itself into confused wariness that aches like someone is using a blacksmith's clamps between his eyebrows and in the back of his jaw. He draws himself up as tall as he can and swallows again. "Sir? Pardon me, but my sister said–"_

 _"Your sister is not receiving the same training you will receive," the teacher interrupts with a short, birdlike movement of his head like an aborted nod. His eyes bore into Arthur's, dark and piercing. "The firstborn is always the father's sword. The second is his_ dagger."

 _The boy doesn't fully understand what that means right now, but he does get that he's still being trained. He can still be useful to his father. And his training will be different from his sister's. Special. At the dinner table maybe his father will ask him about it even more than he asks her about hers!_

 _The boy decides then and there that if he has to be a dagger, well, he's going to be a_ sharp _dagger._

~o8o~

Arthur worried lately that he was going blunt. In his sheath, the knife tip _scratched, scratched_ against the witch-bind key.


	12. Enter the Maiden

Enter the Maiden

They were found that night. Shouldn't have built that fire.

Arthur was awoken by shouts and frantic movement in the corner of his blurry vision. A scuffle, and not a pretty one. He didn't know how he'd managed to sleep through the start; he'd been illogically tired for the past few days. He was on his feet in less than a second.

There was a fight going on on the other side of their current clearing, illuminated by the orange flickers of the fire about ten meters away. Gwaine was a whirling dervish in the center, striking out with his broadsword at no fewer than eight soldiers who danced around him in a confusion of limbs and metal. Two more armored men lay on the ground nearby. Merlin was nowhere to be found.

Drawing the first knife he could find as well as his sword, Arthur leapt into the muddle. Gwaine almost took his head off, then recognized him at the last moment and grinned a little manically. "Victor!" He grunted as he took an elbow to the side of the head for the lapse in attention, ducked down to slash at his assailant's legs, and then popped back up swinging and seemingly unaffected. "Nice of you so show up, deadweight! Sleep well?"

Arthur crouched low to stab at a loose-looking armor tie, cringing when his knife glanced off chainmail with a sort of rustle-screech sound. These guys weren't screwing around. "For your information, I slept exceptionally well and would have continued to even if you'd died," he rejoined. "Where's Merlin?"

The guards were experimenting with pile-on tactics, using their superior numbers to edge inward and limit their opponents' range. This was working out well for Arthur, a close-range fighter, but Gwaine was once again struggling to use his massive broadsword. They caught each other's eyes and went back-to-back. "Stashed him in the woods before they showed up," the tavern-keeper whispered over his shoulder. "That's why I didn't have _time"–whomp,_ another soldier fell–"to wake you."

There was no more time for chatting as the knot of combatants stumbled over to the campfire and Arthur found himself concentrating on not melting his boots as well as not taking a blade to the throat. Full-body armor rather than just some concealed chain mail would have been _really_ nice right then. He snatched the end of a soldier's cape and used it to spin her around, putting her off balance so he could knock her over into the dying coals and stomp a boot down viciously on the back of her helmet, smashing her face into the embers. There was a muffled scream as she frantically rolled away, cape aflame. The remaining flickers of fire finally snuffed out. There were three guards left, circling and eyeing the two warily.

Suddenly, one of them shouted something, and they all backed off a step. Arthur raised an eyebrow at Gwaine, who shrugged and pressed his advantage, bashing another man down with a wound-up blow to the side of the head that actually crumpled his helmet. Arthur swung to face one of the last two, breathing heavily, and froze.

Three more yellow-caped soldiers had entered the clearing, just barely visible in the grey light of almost-dawn. The one in back had an arm around Merlin's chest and–Arthur squinted–a knife to his throat. _Crap._

Arthur backed up a step and grabbed for Gwaine's arm without looking, missing twice before catching it in a rigid grip. Gwaine swung around and swore loudly.

The one in front, who seemed to be the captain, quite unnecessarily shouted, "Stop! We have the asset, and we _will_ kill it. Put your weapons on the ground."

Gwaine came up next to him and glanced over, a question in his eyes. Arthur shook his head minutely. Neither moved to put down his weapon. The captain and her cohorts paused, unsure of what to do. They hesitantly advanced a few meters into the clearing. Arthur had ended up standing next to the unmoving body of the soldier whose face he had pressed into the campfire. She was laying on her stomach, crumpled cape twisted and dirty. It was still burning a little. The smell of smoke and burning flesh drifted diagonally through Arthur's subconscious mind, and he squinted to keep the ash out of his eyes.

The captain cleared her throat again. "You hear me? We'll kill him!" It provoked no reaction. (Outwardly, at least. On the outside Arthur looked like a stained glass window of Saint George dragon-bound. His internal monologue ran somewhere along the lines of "Crap crap bloody hell they've got Merlin they're going to kill him they're going to kill us we're screwed—"

This close he could get a better look at the threatening party despite the gloom. The remaining two guards from the scrum had sought the safety of anonymity and numbers behind their compatriots. Merlin was straining to lift his chin out of the way of the blade, exposing the vulnerable planes of his throat. However, while he looked as shaky as Arthur felt, the air wasn't charged with the rabid-animal fear from the other day. No miraculous save was coming from that quarter.

. . .

Wait. Merlin had done that the other day because Merlin had magic. Merlin was the asset. They wouldn't actually kill him.

God damn it! Arthur wanted to pound his head into the nearest boulder. How had he been this stupid? He'd actually _forgotten that Merlin was the bloody asset!_ Of course it was a bluff.

He didn't have time to die a little inside due to the shame. He needed a plan. Gwaine and Merlin were both looking to him for a plan.

When in doubt, follow orders.

He drew back his dagger into throwing position and showed his teeth. "No. You won't kill him. But I will."

The rear guards shifted stance with a slight shuffling of feet, sending up puffs of dirt to join the haze of ash in the clearing. They knew he had good enough aim. The soldier's knife actually cut into Merlin's neck a little bit, and his quick inhalation was the only sound to bounce around the clearing, pinballing between silently vibrating molecules.

The captain gave a wild, high, undulating battle cry and charged forward. Arthur and Gwaine responded in kind.

~o8o~

Ten minutes later they were running again, back to the now-familiar helter-skelter breathless dash through the shrubbery with the dim outlines of tree branches whipping their faces and phantom brambles clawing their ankles to shreds. Gwaine and Arthur each had a hand on one of Merlin's shoulders.

Suddenly, Merlin gasped. "Wait. That way. We need to go that way!" he sputtered out, pointing off to the left before tripping and almost falling over yet another shrub.

Screw it. Why not. They veered sharply to the left. A snail trail of sweat made it a ways below the back collar of Arthur's shirt before absorbing into the fabric, leaving a cool wet spot expanding just between his shoulder blades. _Why was it so hot?_

They scrambled through the fronds of a toxically green fern–and into blinding light.

 _What?_

This time, it was he and Gwaine who misstepped and tumbled to the ground, dragging Merlin and his surprised yelp down with them. Conveniently, the ground was now free of all underbrush, even though he _definitely_ hadn't seen a clearing on the other side of that fern. Heart pounding, he stumbled to his feet and whipped around, blinking, knife at the ready.

Gwaine got up much more sedately, unrolling his lanky frame with a deliberately casual flourish like a carpet salesman's, but despite his dazed expression his body was all taut lines. He blinked repeatedly. _"Bloody_ –what happened?"

Merlin was, predictably, the last to his feet. "What is it? What do you see?"

Arthur searched the sky. Yep, there was the sun, edging down toward the western treeline. "It's...daytime," he said slowly. "And we're not where we were."

"Guards?"

"Can't hear 'em," Gwaine supplied. "And what's behind us doesn't look like the same forest we just ran through."

"A sorcerer's trap?" posited Arthur hesitantly, drawing three fingers wonderingly through the saw-edged leaves of a hip-height stalk of something. He ignored the surly look from Merlin and his mutter of " _Rude._ "

Gwaine backed up a few paces, trying to identify same spot they'd just passed through. "Was it this fern? Or that one?" Arthur half-expected him to disappear, but he just wandered about ten meters away before jumping up and down and waving both arms frantically. His voice drifted on lazy ripples in the clearing air. "Can you see me?"

Against his instincts, Arthur felt himself coming down off of the adrenaline high. "Yeah, and you look stupid," he shouted. Merlin snorted.

And then all the adrenaline was back, sour like vinegar in his bloodstream, as a voice spoke from behind them: "You know that's the wrong fern, right?"

Arthur spun, no hesitation, and had a knife at the person's throat in a tick. He was unconscious in another.

~o8o~

He woke up in a tent and was somehow okay with that.

What he quickly realized _wasn't_ okay was the fact that he was okay with that. But it was fine, it was great. He'd just wait here until someone came through that sun-speckled flap of white canvas right there, and maybe he'd hold them at knifepoint for information (and why did that sound vaguely familiar all of a sudden?) and maybe the person would be _nice_ and just explain without the bother of the knife. Did he have a knife? Oh, he didn't. Huh. Well, that was okay; he knew a whole lot of ways to hurt people without one. Or talk to them nicely. Would he usually think something like that? He couldn't really remember. But that was okay, too. He could just get whoever was doing it to stop. Everything was going to be fine.

He got up from the ground and trotted amiably over to stand next to the flap where the shadow of a tree would hopefully hide his silhouette from those outside. He noticed that his hands were bound in front of him and quickly dislocated a thumb to slip out. He kept the rope–free weapon! Nice.

Something was definitely up with his emotions, but he couldn't bring himself to care or feel any other way about it than pleasantly contented. He was just happy that his trained-in thought process wasn't impaired. Hopefully he wasn't hallucinating or anything; that would be _annoying_ to work around.

Maybe twenty minutes later he caught the murmur of voices outside of the tent. A hand moved the flap, and he prepared to strike, holding the rope wrapped around his hands like a garotte.

Wait. He recognized that voice. "Merlin!"

The shadow of the person with his friend squawked and scrambled away from the tent. Merlin's hands felt out the edges of the opening before he continued stepping through, not seeming surprised. "Arthur. Let me guess: I should be really glad they took your knives?"

"No, I was going to strangle you. How are you doing?" He stepped back to the center of the tent and grinned.

Merlin turned back to the entrance. "What did you do to him?" he asked, sounding amused.

"Emotional magic. We have blocked off his fear and anger channels. When the spell wears off you probably should stay away while the built-up emotion vents." The owner of the voice stepped warily inside, lifting one sandal high when it almost tangled with a rope on the dirt floor. He was maybe in his forties, pale-skinned with a few gray hairs in his receding hairline and lines around his mouth. Slightly big ears, thick nose. He wore a simple yellowish-brown robe with an odd-looking belt and chose his words with clinical precision. Oddly enough, he had that same hint of an accent that Merlin slipped in and out of.

"So you all...specialize? In that kind of spell?"

"Yes. That is how we obscure this place. Outside of a certain radius the wards convince interlopers that it is day when it is night and night when it is day. You might have felt abnormally tired if one of your nights was drastically shortened, but other than that it harms no one."

Gwaine chose this as the time to wander into the tent and conversation as if he'd been there all along. Oh, so _he_ hadn't gotten the magic happy drug treatment. _Merlin_ Arthur could understand, but the teenager with the sword longer than his leg? Well, that was okay. And then again, maybe Gwaine _was_ bewitched to be unreasonably, idiotically cheerful and Arthur just couldn't tell. "Wouldn't we have noticed if a night was really short?"

They all considered for a moment. Slowly both Gwaine and Arthur turned to face the third member of their group. As if feeling their gazes, he scowled defensively. "Hey, you were the ones who had the bright idea to put a blind guy on watch! How am I supposed to tell time?! I'm not exactly _good_ at this yet."

Gwaine threw back his head to dump the contents of his cupped hand into his mouth and crunched down. Arthur's stomach grumbled loudly. Between chews, he asked, "Why go to all that trouble, though? Aren't there easier ways to hide and protect something? Like, I don't know, a magical wall? We stumbled right in."

The druid seemed slightly annoyed, though the emotion seemed filtered out of his smooth, low voice. He licked his lips, a lightning-quick motion, and shifted stance. Yellow robes rustled. "We still are unsure of how you found this place. As for your question, it's difficult to change the ways of nature. Far easier to just change men's minds."

Merlin looked fascinated. "Really? I'd have thought it was the other way around."

Arthur frowned for the first time since waking up. Given, it was a half-lazy, confused sort of frown, but still progress. "But how does making it seem like a different time actually _protect_ your camp?"

Jean, who had ducked his head out of the flap to check the position of the now-declining sun, sighed impatiently and reentered. "If you differentiate an area enough from another, the magic that flows through the trees and the ground will recognize the areas as different and unconnected. The currents will bend around the space, and so will the movements of men and beasts."

Gwaine raised an eyebrow. "But...you said didn't change the actual area physically. You just changed it in human minds."

"Your point?"

Merlin's mouth half-opened like he wanted to pursue the question further, but Arthur supposed good manners spurted up at the last moment from the back of his mind because he suddenly looked sheepish. "Oh, by the way, Victor, this is Jean. We're in a druid camp. They've offered us protection for the next few days." He was obviously excited to be around other magic users, practically bouncing up and down but managing to keep up a thin veneer of solemnity. He (for obvious reasons) wasn't catching the odd looks "Jean" had been shooting him every few minutes. The man's already craggy brow furrowed further, and his lips turned slightly downward like he'd drunk bad wine. The twitchiness was starting to _get_ to Arthur–it seemed like Jean's face and fingers were in constant motion, rearranging every moment in miniscule ways so that they almost seemed to _flow_ like a fluid less dense than air. Maybe this was just Arthur starting to feel the forecasted side effects of having his mood altered. The thought bothered him a little bit, so he supposed that made sense.

The robed man shook his head, a miniscule moment like he was responding to his own query. "We have to insist, however, that the three of you remain within sight of this dwelling. Now, if you'll pardon my rudeness, I must oversee reinforcement of the border charm. One of our number will bring food and drink shortly." He offered up a hesitant smile (white teeth, very straight), gave Merlin one last suspicious look, and strode out, leaving the tent flap tossing this way and that in the sudden wind.

~o8o~

"You're really friendly for someone who, not that long ago, threatened to kill me."

"It saved your life!"

"Technicalities." But Arthur could tell Merlin wasn't really bothered when he smiled and let the matter drop. (That definitely didn't affect Arthur in any way. It didn't lift a cold stone in the back of his head and blow a puff of warm air over the freezing damp spot below. Of course not.)

"So where actually are we, anyway? More specifically than 'a tent.' Or 'a forest with trees,' _Gwaine."_

"Hey, it wasn't wrong."

"It also wasn't helpful!"

Arthur broke up their bickering by just answering the question. "We're in a semi-transparent tent about ten meters square. Outside there's a wide-ish clearing, and beyond that it's still like the forest from before but a little more arid. I think we're in the same place, though. The sun's about two hands high, and evening's falling."

Gwaine snorted. "Also, our cheerfully garbed friend Jean is more friendly than Victor but not nearly as smiley as you would expect a man in yellow robes to be. What is his issue?"

By now the spell had fully worn off, as Arthur had been informed that he was back to his apparently "arrogant, crotchety, and just plain irritating" self. Gwaine kept grumbling under his breath about getting their hosts to bring back "the other guy." Arthur shuddered at the thought. Right now, though, he could push the anger at having his mind violated to the back of...well, his mind to instead focus his bad humor on the situation at large. He narrowed his eyes. "Merlin, what did you tell him while I was out?"

"We're travelers from a city a couple of miles north of the capitol. We're fleeing soldiers because Gwaine was discovered to be selling barrel liquor down the river without a license."

Gwaine winked. "Did that once, for a while. Boring as hell. Anyway, I wasn't sure they were buying it, so I beefed up our boy's rather feeble story by implying heavily that I was actually smuggling magicians out in the barrels. Never done that, but I knew a guy who did."

"People do that?" He would have to warn his father to investigate major exporters along the river. The thought caused a little pang, like a harp-string snapping in his chest, that caught him by surprise. He shook it off impatiently.

"Yeah. We haven't been allowed near the camp itself, but I saw it in the distance at one point. Pretty big. Maybe fifty people or so, I'd guess. All tents–they must be nomadic. The weirdest thing, though, was the people we passed on the way here. Saw a couple of groups, but no one was actually talking. Just complete silence, even when they were away from us outsiders. It's uncanny."

Merlin shuddered. "Yeah, and that's not the only weird thing. There's this...humming, in the ground even the air here. It's like...bumblebees, but a swarm big enough that the force of the buzz makes your bones vibrate out of sync with each other. I keep thinking I hear whispers."

Gwaine inclined his chin in acknowledgement. "My bones are actually vibration-free, but I'll take your word for it. Oh, one last thing: they're being really weird about Merlin. No one gave my broadsword a second glance, even though I actually lost the sheath while I was fighting alone at camp"–he shot Arthur a poisonous look–"but they keep looking at him like he's wearing a bard's motley."

Merlin looked spooked by this, his shoulders hunching as one hand came up to rub the other wrist. Arthur privately agreed. _Not good._

Gwaine turned out of the rough triangle they'd formed to face Arthur fully. "So what now, o wise leader?"

Luckily, Arthur wasn't forced to fake his way confidently through a plan made up on the spot because Merlin hissed for quiet. His posture slipped with subtle grace–very different from the awkward too-many-limbs movements Arthur was used to from him–into something more defensive, if that was possible. "Someone's here."

A shadow slipped across the side of the tent, outlined now in an orange glow from the sunset. A hand reached for the opening. The other had something round–a shield?–in a weird hold. This time, Arthur really wished he had a knife.

A figure stepped through the entrance, balancing a tray–the round thing Arthur had seen–on one hand. She maneuvered the tray through the door with difficulty, turning around and fighting to keep the flapping canvas from knocking it down before spinning back to face them and raise an eyebrow at their threatening stances. "Uh, greetings. _Správce_ Jean sent me to bring you all your food."

"And you are?"

Her smile didn't show many teeth. She was a teenage girl, very pale and with long black hair pulled back into plain braids. "Freya. As I said, Jean sent me. He is my uncle." Without further ceremony she set the tray on the ground and took a burlap bag out of her robe (similar to her uncle's but a light, dirty purple with dark green trim inside the hood). She pulled out a small loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, a few gnarled carrots, and a zucchini. Arthur was forcibly reminded of how hungry he was, but he didn't make any move to reach for it.

Gwaine, on the other hand, eyed it, shrugged, and promptly sat cross-legged on the ground. He reached up and tapped Merlin on the elbow. "Mate, she put down bread and cheese! And actual vegetables! I think I might cry." He tore a hefty piece off of the loaf and then halved that again, handing one part to Merlin once the other boy sat down.

Arthur watched as Gwaine chewed, taking heart when he didn't immediately keel over. Anyway, they were surrounded by people who didn't need poison or even weapons to kill them. (Now, the continuous discomfort that spiked with _that_ thought was entirely warranted!) Finally, reluctantly, he lowered himself to the dirt as well and reached for the cheese. Freya, surprisingly, didn't leave but sat down with them and grabbed one of the carrots.

For a while the only sounds in the darkening tent were those of the wind and enthusiastic eating. Merlin moaned. "Oh, gods. This is incredible. I'd forgotten what good food tastes like."

Freya finished another carrot and glanced at him, tilting her head. She was moving her skirt on the floor with one hand in a lazy pattern. Her smile was soft, hesitant, and still didn't show teeth. "I'm curious. When you say, 'Oh, gods,' to which gods are you referring?"

Merlin looked a little taken aback at her frank interest. "Oh, the Trifecta Pantheon of Ethos, Pathos, and...uh...Loki? _Logos._ I'm no theologian, but my uncle introduced me to the basics of the Old Religion. Cartwright's sect," he hastily added onto the end.

"Oh. Huh. At least you are not of the Smith's Sect–then I'd be forced to convert you." Nervous laughter, a little high. Merlin hesitantly joined in. "My people are Stonemason's Enclave."

Merlin's nose wrinkled. "Wait, I forget, does that mean you believe magical influence is emotion-driven or based in natural law?"

Freya's face grew very earnest. "Constructs of will and emotion in harmony with nature. But we come of the subsect that does not acknowledge Mab as a new deity."

"Oh." There was a bit of an awkward pause as they both chewed. Arthur cringed a little bit, but Merlin recovered pretty quickly. One side of his mouth quirked up as he jabbed, "O-oh, really? Then how do you explain Oration Theory?" Gwaine caught Arthur's eye with a smirk.

Her grin, which had been slowly gaining confidence, grew wide and predatory. "My friend, I was raised by practitioners in a commune devoted to the Old Religion. You do not want to begin this conversation with me..."


	13. Battles, Bonds, and Burning Bridges

Battles, Bonds, and Burning Bridges

They stayed at the druid camp for three and a half days, having contact with only Freya, occasionally Jean, and another man the two times Freya wasn't available to bring them a meal. The replacement didn't talk much, but Freya actually seemed to make an effort to stay and talk to them for hours after mealtimes. Gwaine claimed that, judging by what he'd seen coming in, there weren't many people their age in the camp, so she was probably enjoying it while it lasted.

Though when Arthur said she talked to _them_ for hours he should really have said she talked to _Merlin_ for hours, with Gwaine occasionally joining in and Arthur only adding to the discourse when Gwaine said something particularly stupid.

The three days passed in a haze of cooling temperatures, flapping canvas, and recovering muscles. God, they were going to get so sore when they got back on the road. At least Gwaine's ankle, which he'd stepped on weirdly in the campfire melee, had time to stop throbbing, and Merlin's ankles were no longer a complete mess from stepping on tussocks and rocks he couldn't see. Arthur's various cuts and bruises that he hadn't noticed in the fight scabbed over or faded. They managed to get a bandage on the cut on Merlin's neck, which was nearly invisible after a few hours (and that made Arthur very uneasy, but maybe not as much as it would have a month ago).

Finally, unexpectedly, the druids replaced Gwaine's sheath without any of them even asking. These people just gave and gave without expecting anything in return! Arthur didn't trust it at all. That just wasn't how the world worked, and certainly wasn't how _magicians_ worked. Magicians were crafty and manipulative by nature since they spent so much time unnaturally manipulating the world around them. Jean would probably spring some surprise price on them while they were leaving. Freya was on a campaign to earn their trust. Arthur would not betray his forefathers by forgetting their wisdom. He'd already forgotten once, though momentarily, that Merlin was the asset. He'd actually _forgotten_ that Merlin had magic, and it almost got them all killed and doomed Camelot. He could not afford to forget again.

But _god,_ these people just seemed so _nice._

~o8o~

It was around noon on the fourth day. Gwaine had just come back from boiling water at the wide, rushing river within earshot of their tent. He was settling back onto the ground cross-legged when Merlin broke the silence. "Hey, Gwaine? What does Freya look like? And–and Jean, too, of course."

Gwaine stretched, seemingly bored, but Arthur saw him side-eye Merlin mischievously. "Uh, black hair a little past her shoulders, skinny, always wears a hooded cloak in some shade of purple or green. Brown eyes. Her nose is straight but kinda has a knob on the end–right, Victor?" (Arthur grunted affirmation). "I'd tell you about Jean, but I don't think you're really interested in him. Just imagine a cold, slimy fish but muscular and middle-aged."

Merlin considered, tracing a path in the dirt with one finger. "Huh. I imagined her as a brunette."

Now Arthur scooted to the middle of the tent and joined the conversation–he'd actually been curious about this. "Wait, so you imagine what people look like? How do you decide?"

"Um, based on your voice, and I guess on personality. Freya's voice is really pretty. Sort of husky and high? Did you notice that? And she has sort of an odd accent on some words that's nice. And _she's_ really nice, and funny. I kind of tend to think of all nice people as brunettes. I can't really imagine faces, so there's sort of a blob."

Gwaine grinned and bumped him on the shoulder. "Sounds like you're _infatuated_ with this girl." Arthur caught Merlin's quick wince and the way he ever-so-casually lifted a hand to guard his upper arm where the witch-bind was surrounded by blisters, swollen and raw. Arthur's hand drifted, again, to his sheath as his chest panged with another one of those crazy impulses that had been hitting him with increasing frequency. But no, even if he _could_ give up the key without betraying his country, it was far too late. Merlin would abandon him, now that the company of Gwaine gave him another option for a guide. He just couldn't do it.

Gwaine apparently noticed the reaction, too, because a pitying look crossed his face and he leaned back on his elbows, away from the other boy. Merlin started to reply with good-natured antipathy, "Gwaine, you can shove–"

And then the screaming started.

All three of them tore out of the tent so fast that Merlin actually caught a foot on the canvas under the flap and sprawled face-first on the ground. Arthur backtracked to grab his arm impatiently, and then they continued sprinting through the puffs of dirt kicked up by the robed people running in all directions around them. Arthur barely dodged a man carrying what looked like a miniature tree in a pot (was it...glowing?) and a woman who seemed to be juggling globules of water in the air above her hands. They took a shortcut through a copse of trees and came out in the main camp clearing, which as it turned out had only been about 25 meters from their own clearing. Here, however, the soil was less chalky and more of a reddish color, like glowing coals. Artur distantly noticed the tight spiral of tents surrounding a massive fire pit and the way that trees actually sprang up here and there throughout the clearing, some of their branches actually incorporated into the tents' support systems. Their dark green canopies and the wine-tinted earth turned what would be a bright, hot clearing into a cool, shady space speckled with the shadows of leaves. The dark outlines of curling branches writhed on the ground like thick snakes. There were lines strung above everything from which dangled colorful pendants, baubles, paper lanterns, and other things Arthur couldn't even begin to identify. As they dodged brown tents and raced toward the sounds of a fight, Arthur spotted Jean standing close to the fire pit in a hurricane of sound and motion, issuing orders to the other druids.

He spotted them at the same time and immediately waved off a dark-skinned man in an orange robe. The shifting leaf-shadows on his face made its quick changes seem more fluid than normal. _"We have been breached on the south side!"_ he shouted as they ran toward him. When they got close enough to speak normally, he explained in a hurried mishmosh of words, "Esseti guards. Latest reports say at least 30, maybe more–overwhelming numbers. Well-trained, well-armed. They must have used sorcery to detect and penetrate our border." He licked his lips and leaned in closer, eyes flickering from tree to tree behind them. "My...with a few exceptions, my people are not warriors." His fear was almost tangible, like Merlin's. "You could run, now. We will run as soon as we have our most important belongings stowed. However, if you could stay and aid us in the fight for time? It would be, well–appreciated."

Gwaine, standing to Arthur's right, made eye contact over his shoulder. There was no request in his eyes this time.

The druids had given so much–not that that mattered. He flung that thought at the back of his skull. But Gwaine had been an extremely useful ally.

 _"Fine._ Merlin, stay here. We'll be back in a few minutes."

~o8o~

Merlin waited on the southern edge of the camp, where he could best hear the battle raging, and panicked quietly. Gods, when not being able to see wasn't _terrifying_ it was just so _damned frustrating._ He couldn't be the one to read shipping manifests and royal decrees to his friends and their parents in the village anymore. He couldn't picture what this new girl, who he really liked and might even _like,_ actually _looked like._ He didn't know what any of his companions looked like. He pictured Gwaine as a bit like a travelling minstrel he'd seen when he was young. Arthur he had trouble imagining. He was probably some chisel-jawed heroic-looking bastard. Then again, he was a bit of a snake, so maybe the long greasy hair route was more accurate. Cold eyes—that, he could picture.

But taciturn cold fish or not, he _did_ things. How had Merlin contributed to his own rescue? He could barely cook or sew, leaving him feeling useless and lazy every night at camp. He couldn't even _walk without help_ anymore without risking smashing into a tree. He couldn't leave Arthur even though he knew he wasn't being told everything or really _anything._

(Though part of him had to stop and consider if he _wanted_ to leave. Some selfish, idealistic part kept mumbling whenever he thought of it about whether it would really be so bad to join some big crusade, take down someone he _hated_ and who was hurting so many people. And another, darker part in the shadows behind that whispered stories of what happened to people who couldn't do things everybody else could do: they were a burden on their families until their families left or died, and then they wandered to a city and ended up on cold stone streets, begging in the filth, and then one day they weren't on that corner anymore. No one noticed.)

When they'd come for him in the night last year, surrounding the shack where he lived with his mother and Gaius, torches blazing, he hadn't done anything. Hadn't been able to reach for that lightning that had crackled inside of him the day he'd knocked down the old man's tree. He hadn't wanted to hurt any of these people who'd so recently been his neighbors, his mother's friends. He had done nothing as the blacksmith's sons dragged him across the dirt and out the front door by his ankles, just watched his mother and Gaius with wide, empty eyes as the women whom his mother sang rowdy folk songs with in the fields held them bodily back from coming to his aid. He'd almost burned that night. Maybe it would've been better if he had, if the soldiers on horseback hadn't arrived in a flurry of long legs and clods of earth and spirited him away, filling him for a few painfully ironic moments with _hope_. (He'd hurt a lot more people now than he would have if he'd struggled then.)

Anyway, now, when his friends and the people who had helped him so much needed him, he again couldn't. Do. _Anything._ The animal part of his brain was terrified, sure, but it _always_ was these days. On a deeper, _soul_ level Merlin was just _so tired_ of being scared. He was tired of only seeing in nightmares and flashbacks. He was tired of never fully knowing who he could trust or who was even _there._ He wasn't terrified, not this time. He was just exhausted and frustrated . . .

. . . and _angry._

~o8o~

Arthur ducked another swing and came up with a knife under the chain mail on a stomach, then barely had time to whirl and block a stab to the back of his neck. This fight was much faster and much deadlier than the scuffle at the campsite had been. He was getting irrationally angry and frustrated in this fight in which his side seemed to make no headway. There were just _so many,_ and they kept popping up out of thin air at the border to replace their felled comrades. _Dodge, stab, stab, block, cut, block, stab, roll, block, block, block, block, throat, leg, pommel punch._ He was swinging harder than usual, and he knew it was tiring him out, but the burning coal deep within his chest spurred him on. A glance to the right as he backed up to give himself breathing room showed that Gwaine had fallen into the same sort of rhythm. Gwaine was visibly bleeding from a half dozen cuts, but at least he was being more successful at keeping fighters at a distance than in their last two fights. _Wow, he really is capable of learning._ The druids were surprisingly effective even with their motley collection of magical weapons–it turned out the potted tree was a weapon, who knew–and all around them soldiers fell to bright lights and vines bursting out of the ground or occasionally just keeled over with panicked looks visible through their partially-open helmets. There were more armored bodies on the ground than robed ones, but there were also many more armored people in the clearing. Arthur hoped Jean would give the signal to stop sooner rather than later.

Then there was no time for thinking about anything other than not taking a sword to the jaw or leg or throat or stomach or arm. He ducked, swung, stabbed, ducked–

–and suddenly lost his footing when the lights went out.

The clearing was almost pitch black. Very dimly he could see the light clay-like dirt they'd kicked up drifting silently at knee height like the cloud layer at a genie's floating castle. A few motes of dust were stained a faint silver, though he couldn't see the source of the light. The same silvery sheen picked out singular scales and links in the armor of the men around him. He backed up quickly toward the main campsite to be out of range when the disoriented soldiers regained their presence of mind. Very dimly through the trees he could see that the colorful lanterns above the druid tents were somehow lit, casting a soft, warm rainbow glow over tent poles and revealing the vague impression of gnarled branches. The red soil sparkled like a galaxy soaked in blood. There was a figure standing beneath one of the trees.

Arthur felt a weird, queasy feeling in his stomach, and then he realized when he went to shift his stance that his feet were no longer touching solid ground. He kicked and fought, but he couldn't stop himself from continuing to rise slowly upward. A chorus of rough shouts and tear-filled curses echoed around the area, so he assumed this wasn't only happening to him. A familiar smell reached his nose, one he'd come across recently, just a few days ago–burning flesh. That was it.

The chainmail under his jerkin started to squeeze.

Something slashed lightning-quick across his leg, and he cried out involuntarily. The other yells grew louder, more panicked. _The soldiers,_ he realized. _This isn't their sorcerer. It's friendly. So why am I...?_

His dagger and sword started to _pull,_ worming their way out of his sweaty hands. He tried to grip them tighter, but the force jerking them away was inhumanly strong. He blacked out for a second as the chainmail got unbearably tight, cutting off his air supply, and then gasped back into consciousness as he felt the links along his ribs snapping. His hands were now empty.

The sunlight came back, and Arthur was dropped without ceremony back to earth.

It took him a moment to register the scene before him. All of the soldiers lay in various crumpled positions around the battleground. He could see their chests rising and falling, but they were unconscious except for a scattered few who were letting out muffled groans. Pieces of metal twisted into tortured shapes covered the ground in an artificial, glistening leaf litter. Weapons were still flying through the air, but this time they made short trips directly to the hands of druids who were busily cleaning up the area. Arthur felt around him for his own blades. Gone. He slid a hand into each of his sheaths. Those knives were also gone, and his chest armor was a mess dangling in pieces from his shoulders under the tunic. He felt naked without any protection.

He slowly stood up and walked with a few of the druids, who had finished their quick tidying mission, to where they were gathering in a circle at the edge of the copse of trees separating this clearing from the red-soiled one. Leaning heavily against a tree was–Merlin? But what about the–

The witch-bind. His sheaths were empty. _Where is the witch-bind key?_

Arthur frantically raked the ground with his eyes, then dropped to his knees to shuffle along and comb it more thoroughly, ignoring the dull pain when metal fragments ground into the flesh under his kneecaps. He had to find it, where _was it?!_

He came up short at a pair of booted feet under yellow robes. Springing to his feet, he found himself inches from the man, who held a very familiar key accusingly under his nose. "Looking for this?" The druid wrinkled his nose and narrowed his eyes. "It reeks of void. Just like _him."_ He indicated Merlin with a sideways nod.

Crap. _Crap._

He wanted to snatch the key out of the man's hand, but Jean would still talk. Could he quickly kill Jean without anyone noticing? No, he didn't have any weapons, so he couldn't do it fast enough. Could he deny that it was his? Maybe, but his first guilty reaction had probably given it all away, and anyway Merlin would know what it was and where it came from.

In the end all he could do was trail through the dust clouds after Jean, who carried the key in front of him like he was bearing a crucifix down the aisle.

As they got closer he could make out what Merlin was saying to his five or six admirers. "I mean, that disarmament spell is pretty much the only _actually useful_ one I know." Arthur interpreted "actually useful" to mean "not horribly lethal." "I couldn't really tell who was who, though, so I just targeted anyone wearing cold iron. Ar– _Victor_ and Gwaine are going to be pissed off when they wake up." Despite his lighthearted tone Merlin's smile looked more like a grimace, and he was leaning heavily against the rough bark of a tree while one hand clutched his opposite shoulder tightly, over the witch-bind. The smell of burnt flesh got stronger the closer Arthur came. _Oh, god._

Arthur felt dazed at this point. He wasn't in his body but was watching from above as it walked on leaden feet through the thick, heavy odor of burnt _person._ He almost didn't believe this was really happening. He'd failed. He'd let down Camelot. He'd let down his _father._ He was probably dead.

Jean pushed his way into the group, stunning the others into silence. He looked at the key and then the witch-bind, and Arthur could tell from his ever-shifting face at what moment he noticed the matching filigree on both. He placed the key delicately in Merlin's gesturing hand. "I believe this is yours."

Merlin fingered it for a moment, and Arthur felt confusion radiate off of him, followed by recognition and then an immense jumble of things: relief, joy, horror, more bewilderment. He laughed once, softly, the sound full of disbelief. Slowly, he switched it between his hands and brought it slowly up to the keyhole. It fit on the second prod and turned smoothly. Arthur felt something _snap_ in his chest as the witch-bind clattered to the ground.

Gwaine chose that moment to swagger up and break the moment of silence even birds seemed to be observing. "What happ–oh, Merlin! How the blazes did you get that off?"

Merlin's voice was very quiet. It still carried a bit of sick, bitter amusement, and Arthur realized with a jolt that he could no longer feel Merlin's emotions. "Victor had it on him the whole time."

Gwaine froze, warring emotions twisting his features into complex knots, and then his face went blank. He leaned into Arthur's personal space, solid as a pillar, face now unreadable except for the cold fury evident in his flaring nostrils. He stood still for a moment, maintaining eye contact, then drew back one fist leopard-quick and punched Arthur full-force in the jaw. Arthur, unprepared, went down in the scorched dirt, cheek throbbing. His mouth was suddenly very dry. The battleground was full of the dead and the living, but everyone might as well have been dead, because the standing druids simply looked on with accusing eyes. No one moved to help him up. He scrambled to his feet unaided, and Gwaine walked away without looking back.

Merlin, however, turned toward him. And the weird thing was, even though Arthur couldn't feel the other kid's emotions anymore, even though the eyes were the windows to the soul and Merlin didn't have any, Arthur could tell exactly what Merlin was feeling at that moment.

Betrayal. Like a red-hot rope around your neck. It didn't feel good.

Merlin bumped into Arthur's shoulder as he passed him. It could have been accidental. The guy couldn't see; it was most likely accidental.

Arthur didn't think it was accidental.

Merlin stalked off in the direction of Gwaine's voice calling from the edge of the clearing.


	14. Battle Lines and Borderlands

Battle Lines and Borderlands

Arthur was almost pathetically grateful when, three days later, they started talking to him again.

"They" not just being Merlin and Gwaine anymore but also including Freya. Jean had sent her as a guide after the battle for the druid camp. Apparently Merlin resembled some cult figure named "Emrys" in Jean's subsect of the Old Religion. Merlin was not as enthused as you would expect from a teenaged boy who'd just been told he was the Messiah; he kept making a face like he'd swallowed a rotten egg and dodging the subject whenever Freya brought it up. Gwaine teased him mercilessly about it. Arthur didn't say anything to anyone. He didn't have a right to say anything to anyone. He was lucky they'd even allowed him to come along.

Merlin was actually the one who had convinced the others to let him come and to continue following the same route, though the second part was mostly because they were closest to the Sinhasana border anyway. Merlin was also the first to tap on the wall of silence that had built between the rest of the group and Arthur with each dinner spent alone across one clearing or another with only the sound of chewing and rustling leaves, away from warm laughter and a warmer campfire. Ironically, he reached out while Gwaine was helping him redress and rebandage the horrific burn on his arm, where the sharp outline of the witch-bind could be clearly picked out in blisters, blackened skin, and half-melted flesh that didn't even look human.

Arthur was throwing more sticks on the fire and Merlin was hissing through teeth clenched so tight Arthur worried they would shatter when it happened. Merlin swiveled one ear in his direction and suddenly said in a strained but cheerful voice, "Victor, I think the fire's gonna smother if you put any more of those on."

Arthur froze for a second, then put down the rest of his handful of spiny twigs. ". . . Yeah, we'll see how you feel when you're freezing your bony ass off tonight." Merlin laughed, then sucked air in through his teeth as Gwaine hit a particularly tender blister. Gwaine glanced furtively at Arthur out of the corner of his eye, assessing.

Then Gwaine's eyes went back to his hands, and his dopey grin returned. It didn't even look fake. "Seeing as it's your turn to cook, dying of hypothermia might be preferable."

Arthur didn't know where he stood, how he'd earned this goodwill, but he was going to take advantage of it. "Says the guy who doesn't haveto cook at all."

"Hey, that was your choice, mate, not mine!"

Freya walked into the clearing carrying two dead rabbits, dangling them over her shoulder by their long, velvety ears. "What was the choice of whom?"

"Eh, it's not important. Just Victor and Gwaine being idiots."

"Oh. Not surprising." Despite her lighthearted tone, she was looking hard at Arthur as she spoke.

Merlin, of course, couldn't see this and continued despite the tension in the clearing. "At least with you here we have a 50/50 intelligence to idiocy ratio. You have no idea how I suffered when I was outnumbered."

"I cannot imagine the torment you endured."

Then Gwaine took a sip from his waterskin and Merlin declared that he _definitely_ smelled alcohol, he was _sure_ this time, and everything seemed to be back to normal. Except it really wasn't, and Arthur didn't think it ever could be again.

~o8o~

"How did you get the job of chaperoning us, anyway?

Freya shrugged. "I am trained to an amateur level in combat spells, and they had to pick someone on rather short notice. Jean made the choice." They were sitting at dusk around their campfire, which had not smothered due to Arthur's attentions but actually crackled large and cheerful, throwing dancing orange patterns up their necks and over heat-stung cheeks and noses. Arthur was glad he'd put in the extra effort since tonight was the first night that was edging toward being as cold as it _should_ be in the middle of winter. Tonight, also, the sky wasn't bleeding into green or purple or orange or blue at the edge of the horizon. The whole dome was just black.

"Aren't your parents worried?"

"We lost my mother and father in the last plague. I don't remember them; Jean and the community have raised me since."

Arthur nodded. "I'm sorry." He cut his eyes left to Gwaine, now the most mysterious member of the group to him. "What about your family?"

Gwaine shrugged. "Similar schtick." He answered Arthur's suspicious glance with one of his own. "You?"

". . . They're both still around." _She's in every room he enters. And he somehow manages to drag her into every single conversation._

Merlin saved him yet again by leaning forward, frowning. The firelight was playing some sort of prank with his tattoos, making them glimmer as if carved-in and inlaid with gold. "Wait, Freya, so Jean is supposed to take care of you, but he still set you this dangerous _and_ unnecessary task. You're sixteen or seventeen, right?"

"Seventeen. And Jean does what is best for the community. It is an understandable and honorable priority." Her dispassionate voice disagreed with her brief sucked-lemon facial expression. She quickly changed the subject. "Victor, what is your family like?"

". . . They're fine."

"Christ, that's really all you have to say about the people who raised you? Bloody ungrateful," teased Gwaine, but his eyes were hard.

"Yes, Victor, I believe we would all like to know more about you." Freya's gaze was steady, challenging, and a few days before he could have brushed this off, but now the ice was a lot thinner. But god damn it, he would not let them make him feel guilty for doing his duty.

"My father and I aren't on the best terms. It's not important."

"What does that mean, though? We're curious," Gwaine pushed. Arthur looked to his right, but this time Merlin just sat and said nothing, resting his chin on his intertwined knuckles.

"Yeah, well, he seems to think his attention and approval are worth more than all the gold in his–in Kaliwat. Guards them like a dragon on its horde." Arthur swallowed the acidic ball of guilt on his tongue and added, "Should we start on the fingernails now and get it over with? Is this a conversation or an interrogation?"

Merlin snorted. "Wow, Victor. That hurts. The way my arm does. 'Cause, y'know, my arm really hurts."

There was a heavy silence for a few minutes as three sets of eyes and four faces avoided each other, turning instead toward the incongruously cheerful crackling campfire. Around them, the shadows seemed to lengthen, to drag the figures back into the impenetrable blackness that leaked out toward them, oozing between the dark trunks of the surrounding trees. Smoke wafted into the face of each seated teenager, smelling sharp and corrosive like a knife's edge or a sulfuric geyser or the end of the world, but no one shifted away.

Then Merlin apparently couldn't contain himself any longer. "Also, just so you know, dragons don't actually hoard gold. They're not sure where people get that."

The mood was shattered, and everyone stirred back to life as the shadows subsided and resumed their dance. "Oh? And how many dragons do you know, Merlin?" Freya jabbed teasingly.

The promise of mischief quirked up on one side of Merlin's smile. "Two. Well, one familiarly."

Everyone else was struck dumb. Arthur actually _audibly_ choked. Freya was the first to recover, and she reached over to poke Merlin, who was cackling at their reaction. _"Explain."_

Once he calmed down enough to get a coherent sentence out, he obeyed. "Well, I'm twelve or thirteen back in Ealdor. I'm out in a field by myself one day when I hear this big _whooshing_ sound and a lot of screaming from the village proper. So I look up, and there's this huge leathery thing with a bunch of sharp teeth swooping toward me at high speed. I know I should run, but I'm just kind of frozen, thinking, _'Bloody hell, I'm going to die.'_ But it lands, and in this really deep voice it tells me I'm _dragonkin_ or some crap and dumps off this big egg and tells me to raise it, and then it flies off. I, being twelve and therefore very stupid, take this in stride and lug the egg home to ask my uncle Gaius how to hatch it, but on the way I decide to name it, because that's the first thing you do with new pets, and out pops this pure white baby dragon! Her name's Aithusa, by the way. She's lucky I got her at twelve instead of eight, because then it probably would've been Dragon-y."

Everyone took a few seconds to process this. Arthur was aware that he still appeared to be trying to swallow something very large and very gross and failing miserably. _Tick, tock._ Merlin looked smug.

Gwaine finally broke the silence. In a wondering voice, he got out, "Wait, 'dragonkin.' So your sister's a lizard?"

"Dragons are not lizards! They're like people, just...scalier."

"Are you certain there were not any odd mushrooms in that field?" Freya piped up.

By this point, Arthur had tuned out the others. He was reeling from the revelation and needed to think. Hadn't all of the dragons been killed off in the Great Purge? How could a human be dragonkin? And how the _hell_ were the other two just _taking this in stride?_

Well, Freya he understood. She was a druid, a magic user. Gwaine was just odd. But there was another thing–he kept forgetting Freya was a magic user! He was already mad enough at himself for forgetting that Merlin was the asset during the campfire standoff. Forgetting something like that was dangerous, had almost been deadly. The problem lay in that she just acted so _normal._ Merlin did too for the most part, Arthur supposed, but Freya had never given off that aura of _scary_ that he sometimes acquired. Was Arthur Pendragon, Utherson and thrice-blessed and second blood and prince of Camelot, really trusting these people? They were unnatural, inhuman, for god's sake! He just couldn't bring himself to feel that revulsion anymore; he hadn't seen them do anything to really deserve it. Yet it couldn't be possible that everything he'd ever learned was wrong. It would be arrogance to discount the wisdom of his forebears. And if his _father_ found out...

Arthur sighed and dragged himself off of the log, turning his back to the circle and the fire to sleep. He missed Gwaine's tavern and its free-flowing mead. Arthur needed a drink.

~o8o~

The next afternoon, Gwaine muttered something to Merlin and took him aside. Arthur had been waiting for something like this, and he followed, avoiding the crunchier parts of the leaf litter and ducking behind trees when possible. He left the stew he'd been tending to simmer in their improvised fire pit. His quarry stopped in a clearing coated in orange leaves that made it look like the ground was aflame. Gwaine grabbed Merlin's elbow to stop him in his tracks, then quickly let go.

"What do you know about Victor?" Gwaine asked.

Merlin's tone turned flippant–guarded. "Well, that's not his name, for one. I don't think he had anyone fooled on that. Unforgivable grouch. Literally the most arrogant person I have ever met. Not a morning person. Terrible spy, preference for leather pants. Don't ask me how I know."

"Merlin, I know this sounds odd coming from me, but be serious. Who does he work for?"

To Merlin's credit, he didn't hesitate. The kid made alternately great and terrible decisions on where to put his trust. "Some sort of rebel faction operating from outside the country, from what I can gather. There's some sort of meetup he has to make in Sinhasana. I'm pretty sure he's trying to recruit me and is just really bad at it."

Gwaine's face was drawn in a way that didn't suit him. It looked like his facial muscles were battling against him, unaccustomed to this sort of gravity. "Can we trust him." It wasn't said like a question.

This time Merlin considered, briefly. Arthur was surprised at the brief pang of hurt he felt and shoved it down deep immediately. Why would he be _hurt_ of all things?! He _shouldn't_ be trusted! It was a little funny, honestly, in a bitter sort of way that brought back the sparking of vinegar in his veins.

When Merlin answered, though, it was definitive. "Yes. I know how he seems sometimes, but I don't think he wishes any of us harm. I was angry about the key, of _course,_ still am a bit, because I thought, you know, maybe I'd earned that? But then I think back and... _gods,_ he's probably scared." His body language closed in on itself, though he didn't actually seem to move from the crossed-arms position. Arthur could read the signs. "And, I mean, maybe I can understand that. He's...he's not wrong." He seemed to force himself not to say something next, pursing his lips and shifting at the waist not unlike someone throwing up. "You don't know what I've– _anyway."_ His inward breath was shaky, hoarse, but when he spoke his voice was crystal-clear and stone-solid. "I owe him. Kind of a lot. I can't very well withhold something like trust after what he did for me." He was speaking very quietly, and Arthur scraped the palm of his hand on rough bark while shifting to hear. "What he did even after what _I_ did."

Arthur thought that, logically, this should make him feel better.

Gwaine studied Merlin calculatingly for a moment. Then he abruptly switched back into Idiot Gwaine, so fast it was almost uncanny. "Well then, I guess it's settled. I'm smiling now, by the way." He clapped the smaller boy on the back. "You ready for the worst rabbit stew of your life?"

Merlin smiled back, though it looked like it took effort. Arthur wondered about the damage to his facial muscles and nerves–the burns and infection seemed to extend decently far down, and sometimes he would react a _little_ late, just behind the joke. Maybe that was just Merlin. "You're only bitter because of the we-don't-let-you-cook thing. Gwaine, you almost poisoned us _the first week after you met us."_

Gwaine took him by the elbow, and they started wandering back toward camp. "Hey, it was _one time!_ And I still think Victor was wrong about those mushrooms."

Arthur slipped away to beat them back to camp, sucking absently on his scraped hand until what little blood was there ceased to drain out into the creases in his palm.

~o8o~

The next night Freya pulled _Arthur_ aside, to his surprise. She'd tended until then to joke with Gwaine and chat-slash-kind-of-awkwardly-flirt (maybe?) for hours with Merlin but ignore Arthur almost entirely, which he supposed made sense with the circumstances under which they'd met. This time, though, she jerked a thumb over his shoulder, her manner a lot less gentle than Gwaine's the day before. They barely got out of hearing range of the others before she stopped several meters away from him. "I don't trust you. I want you to stay away from Merlin."

Arthur snorted and raised an eyebrow. "I've been traveling with him for almost a month, and he's not dead yet. Meanwhile, you're already this invested? You've known us for less than a week."

Her gaze got even more poisonous, and she folded her arms over her chest. "Merlin seems like a good person. But that is not why I am saying this. Emrys is supposed to be the one to usher in a new age of freedom for all followers of the Old Religion."

Arthur almost laughed. "Are we talking about the same kid?" Would his father take this seriously? Probably. The man was paranoid as a boar during hunting season. (But Arthur couldn't really bring himself to believe it, so he could always just...not include it in his report. There was already a lot about this journey that didn't merit mentioning as long as he got the job done.)

"He has a destiny, and he is my responsibility now. I will not let down my people." And wasn't that hilarious.

She got closer, quickly. "You think that because most of my people tend toward pacifism, none of us can be warriors? Those with the inclination, especially those with ambitions regarding priestesshood, are taught the skills necessary to protect themselves. And others." Her voice had gone low and husky. The animals in the forest ceased rustling, like they do in the calm before the earth shakes. His hindbrain screamed _unnatural, unnatural, unnatural._ He remembered thinking just the other night that she wasn't scary. "Should you harm either of our companions, I will not hesitate in calling upon my mistress' favor." The last sentence was practically hissed, and Arthur felt spittle hit his face. He was frozen. He felt like a man on the edge of an abyss.

Then she started to walk away past him, and the spell was broken. At the edge of the clearing she turned, hand resting casually on the rough trunk of an aspen, to toss one last threat over her shoulder. She was smiling again, voice cheerful and flippant and slightly awkward with no trace of its previous venom.

"As our companion Gwaine would doubtless phrase it, 'Don't make me go _Darach_ on your ass.'"

It was ironic that the very copse of trees she'd led him to was practically dripping with a certain type of moss he'd been keeping an eye out for. He looked around once, then peeled some off and rolled it up to stuff in his bag.

~o8o~

Two hours after Freya spread her cards on the table, Arthur found the first mark.

The border between Sinhasana and Essetir, two passively aggressive enemy states, wasn't exactly _policed,_ but it _was_ one of the best-demarcated boundaries on the continent. It was tracked through marks made in colored chalk on the white branches of birch trees near the border–yellow on the Esseti side and blue on the Sinhasan side. No one remembered when the tradition had started, but every summer the royalty would pay hundreds of peasants living in the borderlands to chalk up the bark, and inevitably every summer a pseudo-war broke out as participants (casually encouraged by their governments) tried to mark out trees in the other country's territory to expand their states one birch at a time. Owing to this state of affairs the actual border was in flux year by year, but in (even an unusually warm) winter no-one would be around.

The more heavily you marked a tree, the slower it would fade and the harder it would be to cover the markings, so whole branches close to the border were the color of curry powder or cardamom. Arthur had passed through once on a diplomatic mission at age eight, and he remembered being dazzled by the cobalts and navies and lightning blues giving way to turmeric and lemon.

The first mark, a lightning scar of curry-yellow, signaled the beginning of the end. Luckily the next night it would be Arthur's turn to cook.

~o8o~

He spooned generous helpings of mushroom soup with dried beef into his and Merlin's rough whittled wooden bowls. Then he made sure to put smaller portions in Gwaine's much more crooked bowl and Freya's intricately carved ivory one that Gwaine teased her mercilessly about ("It is not my fault that I was the only one of us who had time to adequately pack! And you do remember that I am the only one here continuously carrying my own things").

He then dropped a very small amount of the moss he'd picked up the previous night into the pot. Maggie, who'd supplied the pot in their original luggage, would've been proud of his sleight-of-hand.

He didn't talk much during dinner, even though he knew he should. Freya and Gwaine went back to the pot for seconds. Merlin, who always ate like a bird, didn't. Arthur didn't.

Everyone went to sleep before the sky was completely black. Everyone but Arthur, who didn't go to sleep at all.

~o8o~

He got up (reluctantly) at sunup, packed all of their things, and killed the campfire. Then he sat back and waited, feeling the grey-white mist soak slowly through the back of his shirt.

Merlin woke up about an hour later and rolled to his feet, infuriatingly cheerful as he was every morning. "A—Victor? You up?"

"Unfortunately. How are you so goddamned cheerful when it's this cold?"

"It's not nearly as cold as it should be, you ninny. You keep saying it's winter, but I'm not sure I believe it."

Arthur couldn't even come up with a halfhearted response and just grunted. Merlin staggered to his feet, jumped up and down a few times to get warm, and then squatted down again to feel for the edges of his bedroll and start rolling it up. "Are Freya and Gwaine here? I don't think Gwaine's ever been this quiet. _Ever."_

Arthur exhaled heavily and watched the plume of white breath drift away to tangle in the tree branches. "They went ahead because I wasn't sure which fork would lead the right way. We might be lost. Sorry, I swear I thought these maps were up-to-date."

Merlin considered. "That's fine, I guess. Honest mistake. But why did _those two_ go? You and Freya are the only ones who actually know the country; I don't see the use of Gwaine on a scouting mission."

Arthur felt sick to his stomach, but he smiled. Time for a masterstroke. "I don't see the use of Gwaine in most situations. But Freya asked him to come along. Not sure why."

"Oh." The tattoos on Merlin's cheekbones seemed to stir and drift in the tattered sunlight. "Oh, that's–that's fine, I guess. So we're...waiting for them to get back?" His shoulders hunched inward a few centimeters.

"No, I know we're going basically in the right direction, so I figured we could start following and intercept them coming back if the road leads the wrong way."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. I'm _pretty_ sure it's the right way, and if so I don't want to waste the time it would take them to come back. It's a calculated risk." Obviously Merlin wasn't devastated, just a bit disappointed. But still, you throw someone a little off their rhythm—especially by saying something that feeds into his insecurities—and he generally won't question whatever else you have to say. As his father liked to say, _seize every advantage._

"Alright, then. Which way are we going?" _Blind trust. Heh._ It really wasn't funny at all.

"Road's on your left. Here, I'll show you." Merlin offered his elbow much less self-consciously than when they'd first met, and Arthur took it and started leading him out of the clearing. "Watch out, there's a huge root here. You've got to step high."

"Oh, yeah! I actually felt the life energy. I'm getting better at that!" Merlin grinned. Arthur grunted assent. They both stepped carefully over the inert form of Gwaine, who was laying across the route out of the clearing. Barely breathing, eyes open and glassy. Unseeing.


	15. Its Weight in Gold

Its Weight in Gold

He was doing this. He was doing this. Was he really doing this? Well, of course he was doing this. It had always been a foregone conclusion. Orders were orders; the rest was just...he didn't know. Unimportant? Superfluous? _Disposable._ That didn't sound right, but that didn't matter. That wasn't how the world worked. Just because something _didn't sound right_ didn't mean it wasn't true. He wasn't a child anymore. _Be realistic._

His country needed this. There was no way they could win without an advantage, and the good of the many was more important than the life of one. Then again, without his superweapon Vortigern probably wouldn't want to stay at war with Camelot. The humiliation of Arthur's flight didn't matter: Vortigern would not let the international community find out his asset had been stolen from under his nose by a teenager. They could probably reach a peace settlement with no lives lost on either side.

But he wasn't a tactician, he was a soldier. He was his father's dagger, and daggers didn't make plans. They followed orders. They stabbed people. (In the back, if necessary.)

He _was_ really going to do this. Right? Yeah. He didn't have a choice. Even without the understanding that orders weren't _optional,_ he'd already drugged their two companions. When they woke up they'd know what had happened (especially when they started vomiting their guts up on the hard ground for a while). There was no path back to fireside chats and easy laughter with the calming susurration of some backwoods creek in the background. The deed was as good as done; "take-backs" didn't merit consideration. So yes, foregone conclusion. _Doubly_ a foregone conclusion, _doubly_ not optional. But he was panicking. Why was he panicking? There was a stone at the base of his throat, something scratchy like pumice but heavier than lead. Heavier than cold iron, and it seemed to be soaking up his swallowed saliva from the incessant licking of cracked lips. The stone was _expanding_ as well as getting heavier. He was afraid it would get too big, plug his throat, cut off his airflow before it could get heavy enough to scrape down the sides and drop down with a _thunk_ into his stomach. He just needed it to drop into his stomach.

Thinking about alternatives was stupid since there weren't any. Not anymore, and there never had been. Time to think about the future. To plan. He was good at that.

They would continue down this road. They'd be met by a contingent of guards at the Sinhasana border—his predetermined possible escape routes had all been monitored since he'd first contacted his father. That had been the plan. (And if there weren't guards... No. They would be there. His father stuck to his plans. His father who he hadn't been able to contact for...almost three weeks now... No. No, that was just the paranoia talking. He'd basically been embedded for almost a month; it was understandable. They would be there.) He'd render the asset unconscious, and the guards would take custody. He would get a horse, _finally—_ while he was in great shape, they'd been walking for weeks and his thighs and glutes were doing their best to finish what Vortigern had started. They would go at forced-march pace through the thinnest part of Sinhasana to Camelot and the castle. He could see Morgana and Gwen. (He wouldn't have to see Merlin's face the whole time.) He could visit later, on his own terms. Things would be better for Merlin than they had been with Vortigern, much better. He'd personally ensure it. He could make the other boy understand. (He could make the other boy forgive him.)

. . .

Not that there was anything to forgive, of course. It wasn't like he'd started as an ally and then been tempted into betr— _acting_ against his interests through the promise of money or something. He'd been working toward this from the start. There was honor in that.

There was a voice in his head that sounded almost like his sister's. It came from the black swamp at the back of his brain.

It said, _"There's no honor in betrayal."_

Oh, wait. That was his own voice.

 _Stop thinking, stop thinking, stopthinkingstopthinking why can't you just STOP THINKING you piece of TRASH—_

Into the awkward silence Arthur hadn't even noticed himself creating, Merlin ventured hesitantly, with an ironic tilt to his lips, "So...what's the weather like today?"

Arthur was glad he didn't have to control his facial expression anymore. The stone dropped into his stomach. It didn't feel any better. Stopthinkingstopthinkingstop _feeling_ just stop—

"Arthur?"

Oh, right. He looked up.

It was a beautiful November morning. The fall chill had crept in without their noticing, and their breath plumed in front of them. The sky was so blue it was almost purple, and it stole the air from his lungs.

"It's great." His voice didn't quaver at all. "Not a cloud in the sky."

He silently took out his dagger.

The road they were following came out of the trees and into a wide green meadow. It had recently been cleared of trees—stumps dotted the landscape. Long grasses glimmering with tiny orbs of dew almost brushed their ankles, but this section of road was elevated, so on the left was a small rut and on the right was a long decline down to where the forest fanned out around them.

 _Distractions._ "You've been quiet, too, Merlin."

A beat. "I'm worried about my mother."

 _Drip._ The scales were almost even.

Arthur stopped, staring down at the dirt in front of his feet. He fingered the dagger's grip, feeling the smooth spots and puckered tears in the worn leather. Smiling sardonically a little at himself, he murmured, "I guess I've just been running blind, huh."

Merlin, having continued a few steps down the road, halted as well upon noticing the lack of footsteps behind him. "What was that?"

Arthur was talking more to himself at this point. "I mean, you're _so convinced_ you know where you're going, but you're really just relying on other people's directions. People you trust, people you think know the way better than you do, but it turns out they're misleading you or were lost all along, too."

Merlin frowned. "Arthur, I told you I wasn't mad about your getting us lost . . ."

He trailed off as Arthur continued, heedless. "You trust them to put you on the right path, but they can't see it any better than you can, can they? So you stumble along as best you can while everyone tells you to go somewhere else and you get turned around and end up in a whole other country from where you wanted to be when you started out. Or you fall off the path completely, and end up in a _ditch–!"_ Here he broke off as well, abruptly.

Silence reigned for a few seconds. They both started walking again, almost of one accord. For a few long minutes the only sounds were the _swoosh_ of wind and the grinding of feet on gravelly dirt. _Crunch, crunch._ Tick, tock. _Drip, drip._ How much water equals the weight of one troy ounce of gold? How many drips does it take to tip the scale?

Finally, Merlin broke the oppressive atmosphere. Tentatively, he ventured, "But...you kept _me_ on the right path. You could have left me in a ditch a thousand times over, but you didn't. We're still here. So it worked out, right? And actually...I was thinking I might like to help you after all. After making sure my mother is okay, I mean. With the whole Vortigern thing."

There was a pattering sound far away, tickling the edges of his brain. Like thunder. Like a spring storm. Like raindrops in the distance.

And then he saw the dust cloud. Soldiers. Soldiers' boots.

 _Drip._

 _Drip._

 _Drip . . . ._

The scale tipped, and Arthur's world was swept away in the flood.

He turned around. Very quickly, like a pit viper striking, only this time, Arthur decided to be a lion, not a snake. He grabbed Merlin's wrist and started to run, jostling the other boy and almost knocking him over. Merlin spluttered a little, then seemed to realize his questions wouldn't be answered and just went with it, just like on that day in the meadow under that perpetual blue sky that he couldn't see but could taste.

A little, surprised part of Arthur's mind whispered, _"He never trusted you too much."_

As soon as they got far enough back that the woods were near the road again he panted briefly, "We're going off the path! Downhill here!" Staggering down the incline, they ran to the woods. Somewhere in the scramble Arthur dropped his dagger. He found an enormous tree deeper in and surrounded by bushes, and he dragged Merlin behind it before peering back out quickly at the tiny sliver of road still visible. He didn't think they'd been seen, but he couldn't be sure. You can never be too careful.

Merlin ripped his arm out of Arthur's grip and backed away quickly, almost tripping over himself in the process. He stood there, a meter or so away, breathing hard. He was still out of sight of the road, so that was okay. For the first time since the witch-bind's coming off, Arthur could feel the other boy's emotions: the fear and _unease_ were curling off of him like strands of spider silk and wrapping around Arthur's chest, delicate but strong as iron. There was something else, too, like a knife between the shoulder blades. _Suspicion._ Merlin had his hands on his knees to breathe better, but he kept one ear toward Arthur and stayed standing light on the balls of his feet. He whispered harshly, "Arthur"– _gasp_ –"what the hell was that. _Talk to me_ , Arthur. I thought we were going the right way." He stood up straight; Arthur stayed silent. The strands tightened, quivering with barely-contained panic. "Arthur, _what did you see?"_

That knife was twisting, twisting between his shoulder blades, rending tendons, ripping flesh, hot plasma oozing sickly down his back. These weren't _his_ emotions, though. He should know that by now.

They were Merlin's.

And Merlin didn't have eyes anymore, but Arthur could feel him _looking_ at him. There was no going back after this.

"Arthur, _what did you do."_

. . .

"We _are_ on the wrong path. We have been the whole time." Merlin got it but he didn't _get it;_ Arthur needed to _explain_ himself, explain the _pressure_ he was under, his–

No. He didn't. He stopped to collect himself, breathing heavily. In a much quieter tone, he continued, "Merlin. I'm so, so sorry. I have something that I need to tell you."

~o8o~

Merlin stalked ahead of him, almost jogging, evading trees way too well but obviously struggling. Still, he walked doggedly on. Arthur followed at a respectful distance. He should just walk away. He clearly wasn't wanted. But he remembered something his sister had said very quietly to him when he was watching his first public execution: _"Just because we're up here and he's down there doesn't mean we're not just as responsible as the man with the sword."_ And he remembered his nurse telling the story of Tyr. Knowing it wasn't expected of him, knowing he would lose the hand, knowing _someone_ had to do it or all was lost, he volunteered to put his hand in Fenrir's mouth anyway for the good of all.

"Merlin, that's the wrong way."

"Yeah? Well, I know where you are and it's _away from you,_ so I'd argue that it's definitely the right way." Arthur noted that he still turned ninety degrees to stalk away in a different (still not correct) direction.

"You sound like–" _Scratch that, you don't get to say that right now._ "I...understand and you have every right to be angry, but you're not being logical! You won't survive on your own."

Merlin swung around. "Screw being logical! Being logical is what got me here in the first place!" he hissed, stalking toward Arthur. "I trusted you because I had no choice. And then I trusted you because you seemed like a good person, but I was obviously wrong there. I am _sick_ and _tired_ of not having a choice in where I go and what I do, and I am _done_ trusting other people to do it for me because _you,_ you arrogant, _inhuman_ piece of shit, were going to put me back right where you found me. In _hell._ Give me one good reason why I should _ever_ go where you say again." He paused a meter away and crossed his arms, seeming to be actually waiting for an answer.

"I...I didn't betray your trust! Not in the end."

Merlin bared his teeth. "That's not good enough! This whole journey has been one _long_ betrayal, and maybe I was being _stupid_ and idealistic and willfully not seeing that, overlooking obvious clues, but you were the one who was _willing_ to do that to another human being."

"I was–I–I didn't see you as a human being!" Arthur cringed. He was self-aware enough to hear how that sounded.

Merlin froze for a second and then actually _laughed_ at that, hard and bitterly. "Oh, great. So this whole time it was just the blind leading the...visually impaired."

"Yeah, okay, but I didn't have a _choice_ in my assumptions! I didn't one day go, 'Let's seek out Merlin and dehumanize him, sounds like a fun weekend activity.' I was told certain things, and I believed them."

"Do you not have a _conscience?_ People have a moral responsibility to do the right thing. That's _simple."_

"But what I had been _told_ was the right thing _wasn't._ I trusted someone I shouldn't have, just like you did."

"That doesn't matter! You should be able to perceive the difference between right and wrong!"

"But _how?_ Who's oversimplifying things now?" The guilt and defensiveness were at war within him, and he _knew_ he couldn't have been entirely in the wrong. He _couldn't_ have, because all he'd _tried_ to do was right. Maybe they were just explanations, not excuses, but he realized he _did,_ in fact, need Merlin to at least know his reasons, know _him,_ if just for a moment, because guilt _hurt_ deep in his gut. He wanted it to go away.

"You should–I mean–" Merlin growled. "You just _know._ If you think about it hard enough, you _know,_ but I'm betting you didn't think about it too hard, did you. I'm betting you tried your very hardest not to even consider the possibility that you were wrong until it had been shoved in your face for a _month_. That's why you're to blame," he spat. "You didn't _bother."_

Arthur couldn't think of a response to that. He didn't want to say anything else, continue the argument. He wanted to curl up in a hole somewhere where he couldn't make mistakes because he wasn't doing anything at all. God, he was going to have to live with this feeling, wasn't he? For how long?

Maybe he could do something about that.

"Look, I'm _sorry._ There's nothing else I can say but that." He took a deep breath. "What I can do is take you back to Gwaine and Freya. And then we can go our separate ways."

Merlin paused for a long second. "And they weren't in on it."

"They weren't. Just me. And they...won't be happy to see me."

Merlin tensed, and for the first time Arthur started to get that _danger_ feeling again as Merlin's tattoos started to writhe. "Did you hurt them?"

"N–well, yes. But they'll be fine! I just made them a little sick; they're _okay."_

Merlin snorted. The whirling of his tattoos subsided. The clearing held its breath.

"Fine."

Something tight in Arthur's chest released with a _snap,_ and for the first time that day, if only for a second, the world felt _right._

~o8o~

Arthur got Merlin back to a pale and dehydrated Gwaine and Freya and then got out of there as soon as possible. It wasn't honorable, and it wasn't right. He just couldn't face their hurt, their blame, in addition to Merlin's and his own. He left them a map and journeyed to the border of Camelot alone.

Arthur went back to his chambers. He made sure that all border patrols waiting for him were immediately recalled, especially those near Kutumbam, where Merlin's mother was. Then he ate his breakfasts, he trained, he chatted with Gwen, and he waited for his king to die.

The kingdoms made peace. All those people dead and in the end neither side even won.

He told his father he'd been forced to terminate the asset. Uther wasn't angry, just disappointed. Arthur was sent on fewer missions, and he rarely spoke at the dinner table.

He talked to Morgana. In his absence, she'd taken to wearing blue brocade robes. Always blue. He won her over to his way of thinking. He barely had to try. She just gave him the coldest look he'd ever seen and said, "Well. Maybe we have a future together after all," then quietly went back to watering the potted fern in her room. Arthur loved his sister, so he tried not to read too much into the statement. He wasn't sure he could take what it implied.

He knew the kingdom would need him as much as much as it needed her. He knew _she_ needed him at her side to curb her more...extreme tendencies. Morgana, no matter how much she hated their father, tended to take his view of justice. She saw situations and people as black or white, good or evil; he _wished_ he could still perceive things as that simple.

The sham trials continued. They would for three years. They would until his father's death. The executions continued. Arthur forced himself to attend every one. In his dreams, the screams became accusations. The faces of the dead condemned him again and again. "This was your fault," they whispered in cracked voices like rustling leaves on a starless night. He believed them. It would be so easy to just slip a knife between his father's ribs, show the man what he'd molded his son into.

However, Arthur also knew that if Morgana took power in a coup, the nation would not accept her. Uther was a war hero king. The economy had prospered under him, and nationalism and fear worked in tandem to keep everyone from thinking too much about things that went bump in the night and people who were gone the next morning. If his daughter tracked blood up the steps to the throne–even if Uther died under slightly suspicious circumstances like simply falling very ill–people would talk and there would be unrest. Camelot's enemies would smell blood in the water and circle closer. With the current diplomatic state of affairs, at least two wars would break out. The kingdom could be decimated. It could even be annihilated. It was too big a risk.

Arthur and Merlin were a bit alike: both a little passive and indecisive. Merlin could maybe make hard choices if he were forced into a tough situation, but it would kill him to make the ones Arthur could make without hesitation. Arthur understood how things worked, could see the forest through the trees. He knew how to sacrifice one innocent life for a hundred, a hundred for a thousand. Most importantly of all, he knew patience. The Pendragons liked to call themselves lions, but in reality they were snakes. Arthur knew how to ignore the hoarse, broken-necked cries of conscience, weld on a cold visage, and make plans for when he got the chance to create a better future. He knew how to _wait._

His father had taught him that.

Author's Note:

i am the symbolism gremlin and im here to steal your bones


	16. Epilogue—Three Years Later

Epilogue: Three Years Later

The servants were in a tizzy. It wasn't every morning that the crown prince, half-brother to the newly-crowned queen, came to the Lower Town gates in person to receive travelers. Who could these three cloaked strangers be?

They all smelled of desert air and spices. Two wore their hoods slung low across their faces, but the wavy-haired young man with the _massive_ broadsword had his thrown back to better showcase a general aura of daring the world to take a swing at him. Ignoring the nervous shifting of his bodyguards, the prince dismounted from his horse– _actually dismounted_ –while the strangers broke off their amiable conversation and did the same, grins breaking across the visible parts of their faces.

"Vicky!" the unconcealed young man shouted gleefully, quickly crossing the space between them. "You've gotten fatter!"

"Yes, well, you've gotten greasier, I see. Physically and personality-wise; I wouldn't have thought that was possible! Must be taking lessons from Cenred." The two embraced warmly.

"It's good to see you again, Arthur. Your supplies and aid came in handy more times than I care to recount, and your correspondence was always amusing. The bit last week about Gwaine's barkeep talents made Merlin laugh so hard I thought he might v—puke." The other cloak might have shot the slight, dark-haired girl speaking a dirty look and maybe an elbow; the prince's attendants found it hard to see beneath the hood.

The prince embraced her as well, not as warmly but still with fondness. "Trust me, your letters were just as good at helping me stay sane. You really should have checked over the ones Gwaine wrote before you sent them off to me, though. He included some very interesting observations about your and Merlin's...can you even _call_ that courtship?"

He left her red-faced and sputtering _(heh heh heh. Better watch your back, Gwaine)_ to greet the last stranger most warmly of all, first grasping his hand and then pulling him into a hug when he was acknowledged with a laugh and a "Vicky. I hope you realize I'll be using that forever, now."

"Merlin, I will forgive that exactly three times, and then you'll find out how many knives I carry on an average day. Use them sparingly."

" 'Course, Vicky." _The absolute cheek!_ The prince stepped back, smiling from ear to ear, and for a moment one footman glimpsed part of what looked like an angry-looking red scar just beneath the hood's lining. However, under that was a grin bright enough to wake the dead.

The wavy-haired one, presumably Gwaine, shattered the moment, dodging around and hooking an arm around his elbow to keep the prince bodily between him and the fuming pale girl. "So, Princess, when do we get to meet your sister? And the infamous Gwen?" He wriggled his eyebrows suggestively.

"This evening," the prince returned, yanking his arm out of Gwaine's and essentially throwing him to the wolves. Nodding to the girl, he added, "You'll like them, Freya. They're both terrifying."

She paused in pursuing her victim to offer him a predator's smile. "My prince, I'm sure I have no idea what you're implying."

The hooded boy piped up, "Well, anyone who can put up with _this_ idiot for practically her whole life is someone I want to meet."

They all handed the reins of their horses to various attendants and started back toward the castle, Arthur subtly taking the last boy's arm with a grumble of "God, Merlin, hurry it up, will you? We haven't got all week."

"Oh, so you think that now that you're a prince I'm going to take orders? I may not have known you were a prince but I've always known you were a spoiled _prat."_

"I swear, you're going to be the first person in history who waits three years to come to Camelot only to be banished ten steps from the front gate."

"Banish me? When you've missed me for all these years?"

"Who said anything about missing you? I just needed a court sorcerer who I knew wouldn't blow me up."

"Never mind sorcerer; you need me as an advisor. If your skills as a spy are any indication, you'll make a terrible crown prince."

And there, on dusty cobblestones that smelled faintly of oranges, at the spot where you could best hear water rushing through the tunnels underground, a Golden Age began. At the time, no one noticed.


End file.
